pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Monthly Archives: August 2014


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More and More

The struggle to fit in and to be liked is a mighty big struggle.  Everyone wants these things so we sometimes struggle to be who God calls us to be.  We can compromise who we are in order to be accepted or to be a part of a certain circle of friends or coworkers.  Often it is just a ‘little thing’ we compromise on, but even this can start us down the wrong path.  Maybe in our minds it is small and not obviously ‘evil’ but it is not the choice God calls us to.  Sometimes we say, ‘just this once’ but it usually is never just one time.

In Romans 12 Paul challenges us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices so that we can discern God’s perfect and pleasing will.  When we seek His will, we begin to focus in on how to live a Christian life.  When we spend time in prayer to discern His will for the decisions we face, then He will reveal the choice we are to make.

As we spend more and more time in prayer and discernment, we come to know more and more God’s intent for our lives and we see more clearly who He calls us to be.  Let our worship this day be the conscious choice to live as God’s child today.

Scripture reference: Romans 12: 1-2


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Won’t You Join Him?

In Matthew 16 Jesus names Peter ‘the rock’ – the foundation of His church.  Imagine what the other disciples were thinking?!  Remember, Peter was the loud, in-your-face, foot-in-mouth, act-before-you-think guy in the group.  But Peter was also the only one who stepped out of the boat and took a few steps on the water.  He was also the only one who went to Jesus’ trials before the authorities.  It was here that Peter denied Jesus.  But Jesus saw in Pater what no one else saw.  He knew the denials would be used to build Peter back up.  Jesus saw Peter for what he was to become – the rock.

We too are all chosen by God.  We too are all empowered by Christ’s indwelling spirit.  We too all possess gifts and talents that God has given us to build up the kingdom here on earth.  We are to work together as the church.

Jesus is inside each of us.  Jesus living in us brings tremendous power.  His Spirit leads us to build community, to help each other grow in our faith, and to bring others into the family.  Jesus brings strength, courage, and compassion to or lives.  He sees our potential and wants to work within us to develop that potential.  Jesus seeks to work in and through us – won’t you join Him?

Scripture reference: Matthew 16:13-20


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All the Difference

When Jesus asks the disciples who people say He is, do you think He really wants to know?  Or is He just leading up to the second question?  I think He really wants to know who the disciples think He is.  I think this because it is the disciples who will change the world.  It is the ones who know him best that will have the greatest impact.

This begs the question of us: do we know Jesus?  Do we know him well enough that we could finish a sentence He started?  Does He know us well enough that He could do the same?  Jesus wants to go beyond prophet, priest, and king to be or best friend. He wants us to be absolutely in love with Him.

2000 years later, the same question is ours: “who do you say that I am”?  And 2000 years later, our role is the same as the original disciples was: to go out and change the world, to go out and build the kingdom here on earth.  How we respond to the question and how we act upon that answer will make all the difference in the world.

Scripture reference: Matthew 16: 13-20


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Trust in Hope

All on this earth will have trials and tribulations.  All will experience doubt and fear.  All will endure pain, loss, and suffering. These things are part of life. What separates Christians is their hope and faith in God.

God never promises us an easy life or constant smooth sailing.  He does promise to always be with us, to never leave us or forsake us.  The maker of heaven and earth promises to be with us at all times – in the good and in the bad.  God is on our side.  He is our hope and our ransom.

When the waters of life boil up around us and threaten to engulf us or when our foot strays too near the snare, we ned not fear.  Jesus has paid the price, we have been redeemed.  By His grace we are welcomed into eternal life.  Once we call on His name and call Him Lord and savior, we have life.  Our eternal life begins then, not the moment we die.  This grace allows us to see the waters and snares of light in a new way, in a way that knows they do not control us any more.

In Psalm 124 we read that the waters cannot trap us.  They cannot hold us.  They cannot define us.  It is God who holds and defines us.  Life will be hard at times as we pass through trials and difficulties.  But God will always have a hand on us, will always love us through.  Trust this hope.  Trust God.

Scripture reference: Psalm 124


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Praying with Faith

Daily we come to God in prayer.  Often times we come with requests or pleas during our prayer time.  We all have items or situations we would love Jesus’ help with – some are personal and some are for other people.

In Matthew 15 the Canaanite woman comes to Jesus seeking healing for her daughter.  But she is an ‘outsider’, a person who most every Jew would not even speak to or would even shun or avoid.  And she knows this.  Jesus reinforces this when He tells her that He came to the ‘lost sheep of Israel’ and when he refers to her as a dog.  Yet she persists.  She persists because she knows that Jesus has something that she desperately desires – the power to heal her daughter.

Don’t we come with the same hope? When we come before Jesus to pray for this or that, don’t we hope for the healing or the solution or the need?

But do we know the same Jesus that the Canaanite woman knows?  Do we have the same absolute faith in Jesus’ power?  Jesus offers us the same thing He offered her – the power to do anything.  May we pray with her persistence as well!

Scripture reference: Matthew 15: 21-28


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Live with His Heart

In your faith journey, have you crossed over from knowing about Jesus to knowing Jesus?  Do you know the stories and teachings or do you understand the implications they have upon your life?  No matter your answers to these two questions, we all need to know Jesus better.

Some of us are committed to “outward conventions” – we show up most Sundays, sing the songs, pray the prayers, put our offering in the plate.  Maybe a few of us add a Sunday school class, sing in the praise team or choir, maybe attend a Bible study during the week.  Yet there is more to knowing Jesus fully that hitting some check marks on a list of things a Christian does.  If the heart and time away from ‘church’ remains largely OUR time, then Jesus is largely absent from our life.

And then there is the list of ‘don’ts’.  But if how we look at this list is grounded in whether or not we think we will get caught, then we only know about Jesus.  We don’t know Jesus.

I know it is an old saying, but it is still true – WWJD?  If our heart starts to be connected to knowing Jesus, then what we do and don’t do starts to be filtered by the same question – what would Jesus do?  As we begin to see with His eyes, we start to live with His heart.

Scripture reference: Matthew 15: 10-20


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A Great Mystery of Faith

One of the things universal to mankind is our proclivity to sin.  In our daily lives, temptation is all around us.  We can do certain things that makes us less likely to sin, but Satan is always at work.  Even for those that do not have a belief in God, they too have an innate sense of right and wrong.  Sin is all around us and the world’s messages are ‘just go for it’ and do whatever feels good.  But these are not God’s messages.  His message is to be like Jesus.

One of the things that is offered universally by God is grace.  His mercy and the grace offered is available to all.  His prevenient grace rests upon each and every person.  His mercy is a free gift that cannot be earned.  It is a birthrite to be claimed by all through faith in Jesus Christ.  Once a child of God, His mercies, grace, and forgiveness flow freely.  Once a child, His grace works to sanctify us, to make us daily more like His son Jesus.

God’s grace is one of the great mysteries of faith.  God’s grace is present with us from the beginning.  Once we enter into relationship with Him, we are changed, born anew.  Although we are still bent towards sin, we are bought with Jesus’ blood and begin the daily battle to ‘sin no more’.  This is a battle that we sometimes ‘lose’ but, thanks be to God, His mercies are new every morning.  Each and every time we seek His forgiveness, His grace pours down like rain.  We are washed clean and made new.  Thank you Lord for this great mystery of faith!

Scripture reference: Romans 11: 29-32


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Natural Connection

Do people of faith always feel connected to God and to other Christians?  Do we always feel like we are part of the family?  At times I think we all feel disconnected from God and from our community of faith.  We are never truly disconnected, but at times we feel like it.

As life tosses us about we can wonder if God is present in the midst of the storm.  We do not see Jesus walking on the water towards us.  As emotions of sadness or loneliness sink in, we question if He is there.  We do not see His hand reaching out to pull us up out of the turmoil.  As we pass through difficult seasons in life, we sometimes look around but fail to recognize Him.  We do not see Jesus in the people God sends our way.  Yet we feel apart from God only in our own minds – God and His love are always present.

In these trials, how do we maintain contact with God and our community of faith?  It starts long before the storm, before the sad emotions, before the season.  If we spend time reading, praying, studying, we build up that “reserve” that will carry us through the trials.  The more we know God, the more natural that connection becomes.  If we spend time in fellowship and in caring groups within our faith community, then we are known and we know others in ways that will sustain us in the trials.  Just as we can learn to sense when another needs us to walk alongside them, others too will come to sense when we need that as well.  We train for the race so that we can run it with perseverance, with strength, and with God’s presence.

In Psalm 31, verse 3 we read: “You are my rock and my fortress; for Your name’s sake You lead me and guide me.”  When we know Him as rock and fortress, trials are so much easier to walk through.

Scripture reference: Romans 11:1-2a


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Within AND Without

Are you an ‘innie’ or an ‘outtie’?  Does your faith reside mostly inside of you, like a well-kept secret?  Or is your faith out there to be shared with all you encounter?  Each moment of our lives can either be a God moment or just a moment.  God is everywhere all of the time – try and find Him there!

Is your community of believers more of an innie or an outtie?  Is the community consumed with what’s going on inside the walls?Or does your church look outside to the world some of the time?  A healthy church does both.

Just as the church must focus both within and without, we too as a person of faith must look both within and without.  We each need time reading the Bible, praying, meditating, and fasting to grow in our faith.  As a community of believers we need fellowship and loving and caring relationships between the members of the body.

Personally and as a community of believers we need to also reach outside of our own personal space or the four walls of the church so that others can come to know this mighty and awesome God we love and that loves us.  Not everyone will enter a church to find faith.  Some find it in the experiences they have with us or with our church.  We must be both within and without.  It is not either/or.  It must be both!

Scripture reference: Psalm 133


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He Is Faithul and True

At the end, after we have walked through a difficult time or situation, we often shed tears.  Some are tears of relief, happy that the ordeal has passed.  Some are tears of pain, brought on when we realize what we have been through.  Some are tears of sadness, offering grief for something lost.  And some are tears of joy, grateful for God’s presence, love, and guidance as He walked with us through the event or situation.

Often when we look back we can see God’s hand all over the events that have transpired.  Joseph could look back over his journey from being sold into slavery to his rise to second in command in Egypt and see God at work in his life.  This is what allowed him to offer love, forgiveness, and assistance to the brothers that sold him into slavery.  He could see God’s hand at work and was obedient to where God led him.

Our faith too calls us to be obedient to God.  In times of hardship that may be difficult.  We naturally want to rely on our own abilities and strengths.  Yet it is in these times that God most wants to carry us.  Just like we as parents want to scooop up our child and rescue them when they are struggling or hurting, our heavenly Father desires to do the same.  Through faith and obedience, we can lean into and on our loving Father, for He is also faithful and true.

In Zephaniah 3:17 we read these words of encouragement: “The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”

Scripture reference: Geneis 45: 9-15