pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

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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


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How Do You Repsond?

Many times in life we are present in a situation where we have been wronged.  In each case we can offer mercy and forgiveness or we can be self-righteous or maybe offer an ‘I-told-you-so’ type of response.  One response brings healing and another continues the hurt.  So… why does the wrong choice often seem so much easier?

I think at times God places us in situations to test and refine our faith.  Sometimes another needs to see what this love of Christ really looks like.  (Once in a while we are that person too!)  Sometimes it is to refine our faith in God.  Through prayer and the reading of the word, we come to the place where we are ready to offer forgiveness and reconciliation.  It is also through prayer that we can come to love our enemies.

What allows us to make that hard choice?  It is the relationship we form and develop with Jesus Christ.  Through times with Him in prayer and through reading the stories in the gospel, we come to see our call to love all above self more and more.  Through our journey to draw closer to Jesus, we too draw nearer to our fellow man.

Scripture reference: Genesis 45: 1-8


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Always By Our Side

Peter was the disciple most likely to talk or act without thinking. We have many examples of this too!  Yet Peter was also dubbed “the Rock” by Jesus for it was upon Peter that the church would be built.  Peter is also one of the disciples who we see struggle with his faith from time to time – most notably sleeping in the garden and denying Jesus three times in the courtyard.

We, like Peter, often fail in our faith as well.  Maybe our failure is to act at all – we stay in the boat or never come back around to that place that we felt called to lead.  Maybe it is a lack of faith to see something through once it gets a bit difficult.  But often our faith is tested and refined by the things we have no control over – the difficult person at work or the sudden illness or loss we face.

It is when we step out in faith or in the hard situations that we face that our faith often grows.  It is when we come to rely more on Jesus that we actually become stronger in our faith.  When we are weak, He is strong.  Peter’s faith shines brightest in this passage when he takes those few steps on the water.  May we also be so bold today to steadfastly step out.  We can do so, because like Peter, we have a savior who is right there the whole time. Jesus Christ is always by our side!

Scripture reference: Matthew 14: 22-33


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One Step at a Time

“It has been said, an eye for and eye or s tooth for a tooth, but I say…”. What did Jesus say?  He said things like love you enemies.  Pray for your enemies.  Don’t just go one mile, but go two.  Forgive seven times? No, seventy times seven.  Jesus brought us the idea of radical love.  Love not just for those who do or can love us, but for all people.  For all people are God’s children.

We can see and read and even understand how Jesus loved and realize our call to go and do likewise.  Its even easy to see a situation and ask, WWJD?  Knowing the answer is often easy too.  But the actual living out of Jesus’ radical love is a bit harder.

At times we stop and ask, ” Really? Love him or her?” Maybe another times its, “Next time, I’m busy now”.  This is just one example of how we struggle and one of how we rationalize not loving radically.

Yet if we take the second look into his or her eyes or if we feel the empathy for the one we are about to walk on by, then we begin to take that first step that Jesus took.  We don’t always follow through, we don’t always walk in His footsteps.  But once we do, then we begin to know the path to radical love a little bit better.  And before we know it, our feet fit pretty well in His footprints.  And we come to realize that, just like walking, we offer radical love one step at a time!

Scripture reference: New Testament


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Ready to Go??

Romans 10 poses two great questions for us to consider: “How can they call on the one they have not believed in?  How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?”  And one of my own: how many people do I know who have not truly heard the good news of Jesus Christ?

In his call for sharers of the Word, Paul tells us that blessed are the feet of those who go to share the story.  In the Great Commission, it is the first thing Jesus said is required of us: go!  Only after we go can we share and teach.  Are you feeling the urge to be a sharer of the Word?

Jesus shows us what love is: He suffered and died on a cross for us while we were still enemies, while we were still separated from Him because of our sins.  He suffered in order to fully love us.  Isn’t that a story worth sharing with others?  Are the bottoms of your feet feeling itchy to get going?

Scripture reference: Romans 10: 5-15


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Sing to God

The Book of Psalms was like Israel’s hymnal.  The songs they sang recounted their history and their relationship with God.  Both the good and the bad are in there – psalms of praise and psalms of lament.  Most of the time they sang songs to remember their past, to seek God’s help in present trouble, or to praise their God.

The songs we now sing on Sundays or in our car or… are also ways that we connect to God.  Some of our hymns contain ‘history’ but many hymns and most contemporary songs celebrate our relationship with God and Jesus and what they bring – hope, peace, love, strength, mercy…

Song has a way of uniting us as a people of God or of bringing us to a common place.  For example, to some songs offer hope for the future while for others the same song is a call to work for justice and freedom for all.  In another way, our songs can be like scripture passages that we memorize.  We can have ‘favorites’ to sing as we praise God, as we seek to find strength or comfort in God, or as we try to connect or reconnect to God.

What are your favorite songs to sing to God?

Scripture reference: Psalms 105: 16-22 and 45b