All That Is New

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 3:13b-14

Our past can be a hindrance or a help in moving toward God's purposes for each of us. For some, the past has meant pain and heartache, and grace is required so that we do not let that which shaped us dictate our responses and the outcomes of those responses in our future. If we allow our past to make us a victim, then we have not entered into the grace that God has for us. To be sure it is a decision we make. God's grace saves us and changes us or it does not. If we live on memories of past successes and fail to raise our vision for new things, we again are victims of our past. Our past becomes our highlight reel.

That is not God's vision for your life

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland - Isaiah 43:19.

Our past should only be viewed for what we can learn from it. We should understand it so we can trace the finger of God, even when we were in rebellion, in our lives. We must move forward and avoid viewing the negative or the positive for more than what we can learn; for how our Heavenly Father can take that information and build our future from and with it. Are you going to allow your past dictate your future.? God is always about doing new things in our lives. New things means He is doing something unique today and will again do something unique to you and I in our tomorrow's. He gives fresh insight of His purposes in our lives. At the very least these new adventures provide us with new clues to His calling and His election of us into the offices to which only He can call us.
Do not live in the past. Do not hold onto bitterness that may hinder God from doing new and exciting things in your life.

Our eternal Father turns our wastelands into streams of water to give life, not death. He means for each event and memory to lead to the glory of His name. Your quest, your adventure is to figure out how.

How are we viewing our past? How much time are we giving to it? Are we glorying in it? Has it hindered us to become more of Jesus Christ? Have you relied on past successes to dictate what you will do in the future or stymy you from moving forward toward new goals? Put your memories in their proper place. Allow God to do a new things in your life. Seek His guidance to assist you to see the new things He wants to do in and through you today.

"When your memories are bigger than your dreams, you're headed for the grave" [Author unknown]...I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~

The Greatest Light in Our Personal World Is...?

Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. - Romans 3:3-5

As I grow older, ya know, just plain older; but also as I mature in faith I have become more concerned with what separates those who have a false sense of security in Jesus than I am worried about those who rightly and properly understand why it is they are bound for eternity with God. I hadn't thought about this much until I began, once more, reading John Piper's book Desiring God. In the book Piper makes a strong case for the joy of salvation that Christians properly feel emanating out of them from a shift in the primary focus on their love and affection. Who do you love most? Piper scripturally argues that if your foundational love; from which all other affection is drawn from; the source of all your love or happiness is your love of God then you can wrap your heart, mind and soul around your correct assumption that you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.

So what then is the wrong love focus? How might you wrongly assume the happiness you get from being saved is false hope? What then might it be that gives us a counterfeit sense of, "I am saved?"

In a recent message to his church John Piper spoke these words,

Millions of nominal Christians have never experienced a fundamental alteration of that foundation of happiness. Instead they have absorbed the notion that becoming Christian means turning to Jesus to get what you always wanted before you were born again. So, if you wanted wealth, you stop depending on yourself for it, and by prayer and faith and obedience you depend on Jesus for wealth. If you wanted to be healthy, you turn from mere human cures to Jesus as the source of your health. If you wanted to escape the pain of hell, you turn to Jesus for the escape. If you wanted to have a happy marriage, you come to Jesus for help. If you wanted peace of conscience and freedom from guilt feelings, you turn to Jesus for these things.

In other words, to become a Christian, in this way of seeing things, is to have all the same desires you had as an unregenerate person—only you get them from a new source, Jesus. And He feels so loving when you do. But there’s no change at the bottom of your heart and your cravings. No change in what makes you happy. There’s no change in the decisive foundation of your joy. You just shop at a new store. The dinner is still the same; you just have a new butler. The bags in the hotel room are still the same; you just have a new bellhop.

I believe Dr. Piper is right.

Genuinely being born again, saved, and a part of the new birth in Jesus Christ has the affect of changing our fundamental desires. Where I once desired my own selfish wants and needs primarily, I now simply wish, regardless at the cost to me to glorify my great God.

For each of us the question becomes this, "Am I loving God because He made me a big deal and did a lot for me, and in my future even more if or am I loving Him because I realize the magnitude of what He has done for me though I deserve not one bit of it?" Perhaps another way of saying it would be, "is my love of God founded in Him or founded, in some manner, in me?"

Those who desire to honor God might say it better than I and I am trying to get my arms around it but the core of this seems to be that I need to understand God did all He did for me so that His glory would shine forever. I need to get that into my heart. This is not about me primarily. It is about Him fully. There is verse after verse that point out the ways in which God reveals His great love to us for His Glory and His Own sake!

Check these verses out:

• Luke 2:10-14 is the manger story and ends this way, "... glory to God in the highest!" (We get a savior and God gets the glory!)
• Isaiah 43:6,7 commands God's prophets to bring forth his children with the end reason, "...whom i created for my glory."
• Ephesians 1:5, 6 tells us through the giving of His Son God adopted us back into his family. Why? "...to the praise of His glorious grace."
• Psalm 79 essentially says that God pursues us for His Glory. Verse 9 resounds, "Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for Your name’s sake!" I might get a benefit but my God ultimately gets something far superior-GLORY. This is how the truly saved might pray.
• John 17:24 and this is how Jesus prays when speaking about this very subject of our right standing and salvation with God. Check this out: Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

Jesus wants us with Him. To be sure He has and will yet do many things for us (Check out the book of Revelation sometime to see what is, in small part, yet to be done for us...HUGE!) but what is our joy and our happiness? ... to see His glory!

This could go on and on but I point these out to express that the love of God is meant to lead us back to His glory and His honor and our praising Him and it is an end in itself and that is how the born again, he saved, the truly blood washed see their salvation. Where once I had no desire to love on God now I cannot help but see how everything points back to Him that is good, right, pure, peaceful, loving and full of His glory.

So what's in it for you and I? Well I think you can probably answer these questions yourself; at least partially. I've already made this way too long but here is a short list and you look up the scriptures to validate it:

• I receive eternal life because He receives the glory
• I receive riches beyond this worlds count because He receives the glory
• I receive His purpose for me in this life because He receives the glory
• I receive His personal direction and instruction because He receives the glory
• I received and continue to live in His great love through Jesus Christ because in His having given that to me He receives the glory

This is truly the short list...judge angels, joint heirs, ruling and reigning, it goes on and on doesn't it...and for it I weep for joy and bow down and worship the great God of all because He deserves all honor and power and glory for ever! God gives us so much and loves us so much and makes so much of us because in doing so, in the way that only He can do it true and fulfilling love, God's love and loving God is regenerated.

Don't let all God has done and will be done for you become the reason for your love of God. Don't make some aspect (love, wisdom, freedom, power, healing, gifts, etc.) become the reason for your love of God or others.  We can love Him because He first loved us, gave His Son for us and now, by opening up our eyes of understanding, allows us to glory in the unfathomable love that is our God.

I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~

Walking in the Ointment!

So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.... - 1 Samuel 16:13

I recall hearing these words of a country pastor at a David Wilkerson rally as a teenager (Anyone remember The Cross and the Switchblade?), "God desires that you always walk in the ointment!" I recall thinking to myself, "Ewwww!!! God!!! C'mon! - not that!" Well I have since learned there are differences between the ointment that my grandma used to put on everything that ached (and that made me wish I had no olfactory senses) and God's unique and unusual calling in the life of one of his kids.

The anointment or anointing is to be desired by Christians. God does have a plan for your life. It is that you lose it in His and that you do it when He touches you, gives you not only direction but power!

So the question is, how has the Holy Spirit of the Lord rested on your life? And a follow-up, can you recall when God's Spirit began demonstrating His power through you? When was it? Where was it? How did it express itself?

David knew the day the Spirit of the Lord began a special work in him. God's Spirit is different from most leaders. Instead of seeking power and control, He led, provided inner guidance, wisdom and direction in response to a felt and physical need. Instead of being a perfect person, the spirit revealed to David and David learned from mistakes and acknowledged them among those to the nation of Israel.

DAvid caught on. Do not place confidence in your own abilities. And he sought wisdom from the only real wise one and sage, the Lord God Almighty.

Because of his learned sensitivity to the leading of God on his life, this anointing, David never lost a battle. It was true that he failed God by sinning with Bathsheba and by numbering the troops after God told him not to specifically, but King David learned from each misstep. He took his medicine. Sin cost him dearly. But, the Spirit of the Lord never left David. The Holy Ghost never left because David was always tender, sensitive and had his heart and ear bent toward God. David's pride was never greater, in his human mind, than God's call.

So, as Vizzini says in the Princess Bride, "So, now it comes down to you and now it comes down to me." You, if you know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior you have a calling on your life. How are you responding? Tender? Sensitive to God's Spirit? You need to know God will not allow that Spirit to rest on us if we are prideful. If we seek to control outcomes and manipulate out of our need for power or yes, even our of our insecurity. Servant leaders are aware they're only a clay pot in the Master Potters hands. They serve a purpose. They are pliable. They don't value themselves more than they ought but realize that they do have eternal value as long as they stay in HIS grip.

King David's heart, though he was imperfect, belonged totally to His God. Today, with me, let's once more give God our all and commit to having a hearing spirit so the Great Holy Spirit of God may begin His job of leading us into all truth and the adventure of an eternal lifetime!

I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~

When God Kicked the Dog

I was listening this morning to a radio host who came dangerously close to letting the world off the hook. You may ask what I mean by that...

He was quoting a leading voice in the Emergent Church movement who was talking about the concept of Hell. Essentially, this leader, Brian McLaren, was saying that there was a "problem" with traditional theology it's teaching on Hell and on the idea of the centrality of the Cross of Jesus Christ. I've embedded a YouTube video. Listen to what this sweet and gentle voice of reason says and then get back to me on the other side of listening.



Oh Lord! May it never be said that you can't do something you ask of others! How insidious is that!

Guys, this may all sound very clever, but it does not match up with Scripture. Hell is not antithetical to the cross! Hell exists because of one very important aspect of the person of our God. He is a holy and perfectly just God. He takes rebellion against Him, His person, His truth, His leadership and yes, His rule ...He is a God that takes sin seriously. He is not a god who values personal lawlessness (don't call it freedom - God has a definition of freedom and that for another teaching) or that could care less regarding the way you live out your days on earth.

And what of Jesus? Jesus died on the cross because God is both perfectly just AND infinitely gracious. A God who could in fact take the hit of having His most precious relationship, His most precious and fully perfect Son humiliated in the site of the "piss ants of the Milky Way," human beings. Jesus actions represented how God made a way in which He could extend His grace to us without compromising His justice.

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus ~ Romans 3:21-26

That is the gospel! If God were not just, Jesus’ sacrifice inclusive of the cross would not have been necessary. God, said it was required. And if God were not gracious, He would have left you and I separated in our sins rather than sending His Son to a wretch like me. We can be forgiven because grace and justice met at the cross. Praise God that He is both Just AND the Justifier!

Let’s proclaim the Biblical Gospel faithfully! It is the only Gospel that saves. We have to take a stand. Dr. McLaren may not wish to stymie a "conversation" but the fact is Paul, Peter, John, Eusibius, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Finney, Moody, Ironside, Graham, Swindoll, MacArthur, Beth Moore, and Joyce Meyer and 10,000,000 more some who just preached it and others who interpreted it had it right. There is a hell to shun and a heaven to gain! And, while we are at it, let us make sure that when we are hit with these kinds of thought processes, from these kinds of heretical corners of unacceptable liberalism, thoughts that elevate the idea of love at any cost, including the Bible account, that we have a standard and know where we stand.

I remain...in the arms of my loving Savior and grateful from all He has saved me from, including an actual Hell.

InHISgrip,
~J~