pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: example


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Calling

Reading: Luke 14: 28-33

Jesus wants us to know that much is required before we commit to becoming a disciple.  It will require difficult decisions that often carry a cost, the courage to stand out from the world, a singular focus to listen to Jesus’ voice above all others, and a commitment to love and serve the least and the lost.  When we think we are up for the task of being a disciple, Jesus is saying, in essence, “Are you sure?  Really sure?”

No one likes to begin something they cannot finish.  To begin something that stalls out due to lack of time, energy, resources, or vision is frustrating and often embarrassing.  So to begin a major or important project, it is essential to make sure we have all it will take to complete the task at hand.

What does it take to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?  First, it takes commitment to love others more than self.  Jesus spelled this out with His answer to what the greatest commandment was.  He said we must first live God with all that we are and we also must love neighbor as He first loved us.  Throughout the Gospels we have the example of what this looks like lived out fully in the life of Jesus himself.  In the remainder of the New Testament we have numerous examples of what it looks like to live as a disciple.  So what it takes is made clear in the Bible.

This is a difficult calling.  It is a decision that requires much consideration.  But when we accept the calling, we know that we do not walk alone.  We have Jesus, our great high priest, who interceded for us before the throne of God.  We have the Holy Spirit, which comes to dwell in us and to lead and guide us.  And we have each other.  Our fellow disciples support, encourage, teach, correct, and pray for us just as we do these things for them.  As we answer the calling and walk this road of discipleship, we do not walk alone.  For Jesus Christ, for the Holy Spirit, and for our fellow disciples we say thanks be to God!


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Psalms and God’s Love

Reading: Psalm 81: 1 and 10-16

The Psalms contain much history but also have a beauty about them.  The Psalms were written to be read aloud like poetry or sung communally like a hymn.  The Psalms had a specific purpose – to recall, to celebrate, to remember God’s presence and activity in the lives of the people.  Often in church we read a Psalm in unison, often with a sung response.  This is for the same purpose – to remember God’s presence in the past.  We remember so that we can seek it in the present.

Within many of the Psalms we see both the blessings when we were obedient to God and the consequences when we were disobedient.  The Psalms also reveal much about God.  Most importantly they reveal God’s love for us.  There is a palpable feeling of joy and elation in God’s words when we are living as faithful disciples.  There is also a sense of sadness and mourning in those times when we have gone astray.  God very much desires to be in a strong, loving, caring relationship with each of us.

When we live in a community of faith, when we adhere to following Jesus’example, when we keep closely connected to God in Word and prayer, and when we sacrificially offer ourselves and our blessings to others, then we are living life as God intended.  When we become obsessed with or focused on possessions, success, or popularity we are living life in a way that God did not intend.  When Satan has tempted us with earthly treasures, we are being disobedient to God’s ways and our relationship with God is weak and tenuous.

Verse 10 reads, “I am the Lord your God, open wide your mouths and I will fill it”.  When we turn to God and when we seek God, then our souls will be filled with God’s love.  It is a filling that leads to a deeper relationship and a desire to share this live that we so rejoice in.  It is a live that we carry into our homes, into our placed of work, into our schools, and into all areas of our world – even into the places where darkness still resides.  It is here that God’s love is most needed.  May we ever be the light of God’s love, every carrying this love to all we meet.


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Bringing Christ 

Reading: Colossians 1: 24-28

One of the reasons Christ became flesh was to be like one of us.  Jesus Christ walked the earth in a human body and set for us an example of how we are to live.  Once we come to the point of accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, then His Spirit comes to dwell in our fleshy bodies.  With the indwelling of Christ in us we know the hope of our eternity.  We know that once Christ dwells in us and lives in us, that one day we too will experience resurrection and will rejoice in the hope of eternal life in the heavens.  This is wonderful news for all believers.

Paul also writes of suffering.  He rejoices in what he has suffered in order to continue advancing the gospel.  Paul is always ready to suffer for others.  He is so willing to do so because Jesus Christ first suffered for him.  Through the ultimate suffering on the cross, Jesus provided the path to our hope of glory, to eternal life.

Once we come to have Christ in us and to live our lives in Christ, we begin to take on and then seek to emulate all aspects of Christ.  Suffering is one aspect of Christ that we, like Paul, are called to take on.  As His followers we too must be committed to suffering as Christ suffered.  It is a willingness to both suffer for and to suffer with those who suffer.  It is a willingness to have less so that another may have some.  It is a willingness to enter into relationships with those who suffer and to walk alongside them to alleviate some of the suffering.  It is a willingness to give one of the things we hold most dear: time.

In willingly offering ourselves in suffering for another, we bring Christ himself to those most in need.  As Paul wrote, we share Christ so that “we may present everyone perfect in Christ”.  It is living out our great commission to bring all people in all nations to kneel at the foot of the cross.  This day and each day may we embrace each opportunity God brings to suffer as Christ suffered, all for the building of the kingdom and all for the glory of God.


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Go and Do Likewise 

Reading: Luke 10: 29-37

God, who is my neighbor?  This question has a different connotation today than it had in Jesus’ day.  In Jesus’ day, the community was close knit.  One knew a lot about one’s neighbors.  But today many people do no even know the person across the street.  We may have hundreds of friends on social media flung far across the world, but we are too often isolated in our own homes.

In today’s parable Jesus sees neighbor as not just the people living around us, but also as anyone we might come into contact with.  This definition really changes the ball game.  We might be willing to take a meal to the family next door if we know they are struggling, but the family across town that we do not even know?  In Jesus’ world, yes we would.  Neighbor is everyone.

We can take a meal to the family next door even if we are really not friends.  We can do it even if we do not really get along.  It is a quick, limited interaction type of engagement.  It is a safe foray with little commitment.  In our story today, the Samaritan goes beyond this – way beyond.  He stopped, got his hands dirty, actually cared for the wounded man, took him to a place to recover, and paid for it.  He even told the innkeeper he would pay for any additional expenses when he returned.  And I bet he stopped in and checked on the wounded man.  They probably became friends!

Jesus saw all people as His neighbor.  In the parable we clearly see our call ad Christians to love all people that we encounter.  It is the example set by the Samaritan and by Jesus.  As Jesus said to the lawyer, may we too go and do likewise.


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All

Reading: Galatians 1: 11-24

Paul, as the most zealous persecutor of the early church, was probably the most unlikely to become one of the great apostles of the early church.  He was about as far as one could be from Jesus Christ.  His mission in life was to wipe this new faith off the face of the earth.  Yet God, in His amazing grace, claimed Paul to be one of His own.  God took the one who persecuted, imprisoned, and even murdered Christians and made him into an excellent witness for Jesus and the church.  Paul realizes this miraculous change in his life and it becomes his call to ministry.  If God could reclaim him, God could reclaim anyone.  Paul also sees in Jesus another example of one who would reclaim any and all.  In his own life and in the example of Jesus, Paul came to know a God who loved everyone and desperately wanted all to be a child of God.  This became Paul’s mission as an evangelist supreme.

It was primarily through Paul that the church came to really understand Jesus’ command to ‘make disciples of all nations and peoples’.  Jesus really meant all.  The grace that Paul experienced was a grace that all people everywhere were intended to experience as well.  Paul was so gripped by God and Christ’s presence in him that he sought to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, to all of the known world.

Paul’s life is an excellent example for us in two ways.  First, God will use anyone to spread the gospel.  If God chose and used Paul, all of us are fair game.  There is no one that God cannot use, no one that He does not want to use.  Second, Paul taught us that we need to share Christ with all people.  Through his own transformation, Paul knew the need for transformation in all people’s lives.  He sought to help all to come to know Christ so that they too could experience His transforming grace in their lives.  This day and every day may we, like Paul, live into God’s call on our lives to be both examples and witnesses to the transformation that God has made in us, so that all we know may come to experience the same in their lives.


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New Creations

Reading: John 14: 8-17 and 25-27

In today’s passage, Jesus promises the disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Like most of us, Philip wants the gift now.  He asks Jesus to show them the Father.  And in a familiar pattern, Jesus patiently explains that He has been showing them the Father all along.  Jesus explains that the words and the works are because the Father is in Him and He is in the Father.  Then Jesus tells them again of this gift of the Holy Spirit.  With this gift the disciples will experience the indwelling presence of God and Jesus within them.  And not only will it be in the disciples, but the Spirit will allow them to do even greater works than Jesus did.  The presence of the Holy Spirit is just one more step in bringing the new creation into being.

Jesus was also a step.  In His example and in the works He did, Jesus began the process of making all things new.  In His teachings He showed a new way, a better way – the way of love.  In truly loving others, we reveal the true nature of God.  Jesus also began the new creation by restoring people.  For some it was a physical restoration: the blind see, the lame walk, the mute speak.  For some, like the lepers, there was also an emotional healing as they were restored to the community as well.  For still others, the restoration was the first steps to returning to a relationship with God.  Jesus was making all things new, providing a glimpse of what the new heaven and earth will be like.

Jesus continued this work with the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples at Pentecost and to all who have called on Him as Lord and Savior ever since.  The same Spirit dwells in each of us, giving us the power to reveal the new creation that is in motion.  Through our lives, words, actions, and deeds, people in our lives can begin to see, understand, and experience what Jesus offers: to be made a new creation.  May we be willing servants in the building of His kingdom here on earth.


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His Witness

Reading: Ephesians 1: 15-23

Paul’s prayer for the church in Ephesus is that the Holy Spirit would bring wisdom and revelation to the church so that they would know Jesus better.  Paul lists three reasons why he is praying this prayer: to know the HOPE of salvation; to know the riches of the larger church; and, to gain a sense of His power.

It is one thing to know who Jesus is.  A good teacher.  A man with the power to perform miracles.  A moral example.  Yes, Jesus is all of these things.  But to know Jesus more, to the depth of calling on Him as Lord and Savior, requires faith and belief that He is the Son of God.  Once our ‘knowledge’ of Jesus has reached this place, then we begin to live for Him and not for self, knowing that our salvation, the eternal rescue of our spirit, rests firmly in His hands.

As we become a part of a community of faith we become richer.  The fellowship, worship, mentoring, accountability, and love of the faithful makes our lives so much better.  In turn we too can discover and offer the gifts that God has bestowed upon us to enrich the lives of the church and the world in which we live.  These experiences of sacrificially giving of self to others and receiving from others unconditionally opens the way for us to begin to sense His power at work.  It is through these acts of love and sacrifice that we begin to truly live as Jesus lived.  As we connect others to Him, we ourselves deepen our relationship with Jesus as well.

May we be His witness and example today, growing in our knowledge of Jesus Christ by following Him in all we do today.


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Love as He Loved

Reading: John 13: 31-35

If it is really lived out, Jesus command to love one another as He first loved us is hard.  I imagine as this new command first landed on the disciples’ ears, they recalled good things Jesus did – healings, teachings, even things not recorded in the Bible.  But as they continued to think about this new command, maybe their thoughts drifted back to when Jesus healed ‘that guy’ or when He offered loving words to a lowly Samaritan.  Who knows what their prejudices, hang ups, or inner struggles were – we all have them.

We too can spend time with Jesus by reading and meditating on the Word.  Through time with the Word we come to see and understand what Jesus meant by this new command.  We may not understand the ancient cultural reasons why a Jew and Samaritan did not talk to one another but we can see that Jesus offered Himself to all He encountered.  He did not judge or look down on or condemn anyone.  Even in His confrontations and exchanges with the religious authorities there is a feeling that Jesus is truly sad that they don’t get it.  Each time they return to come at Him again, He tries to continue to teach them, to help them see that He really is the Messiah.

The kind of people who came to mind for the disciples and the religious authorities that always came at Jesus are like the people who make it hard for us to love all as Jesus loved.  Yet hard is not impossible.  We have an excellent example to follow in He who gave the command.  We will at times fail.  But the key is to realize our failure, to repent, and to resume the journey.  When we seek to love all as Jesus first loved us, our love will grow and we come to love one we just couldn’t love just the other day.  May our love grow and grow as we come to be more and more and more like Jesus.


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Praise the Lord!

Reading: Psalm 148

Praise certainly is the main idea of Psalm 148!  At the beginning is a general call to praise the Lord.  The  praise quickly begins in the heavens with the angels, moon, stars, and sun.  Each is called to praise God for both their own creation and for their eternal place in God’s creation.  Then the Psalm shifts to the earth and calls all to praise the Lord.  The psalmist calls upon the elements and parts of nature that God stirs to life.  Also called are all of the living creatures and all of humanity – from Kings to children to the old.

All of this leads us to see that in our daily life we should offer our praise.  Our praise should be deeply rooted in our prayer life, letting God know how grateful we are for all He has blessed us with.  Our praise should also shine out through our lives in such a way to bring glory to God in all we do.  Just as all of creation reveals God and is called upon to bring Him praise, so should all of our lives.

The Psalm draws near its end recognizing that God alone is to be exalted.  We are to  worship none other than God.  We are not to worship any other being or any other thing.  But in a world that pushes pleasure, self-satisfaction, and individual preferences, this is tough to do.  To worship Him alone takes discipline, dedication, and effort.  Even with  heaping amounts of these, we cannot obey on our own.

At the very end of the Psalm, it is written that the Lord has raised up a horn which is the “praise of all His saints”.  This strong and mighty King is Jesus, the perfector and witness of our faith.  In Him we find the example of how to live a life of praise that brings glory and praise to God alone.  In Jesus we also find the strength to do what we cannot do on our own.  Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we find guidance, direction, correction to help us follow Jesus’ ways and teachings.  May we join all of creation in praising the Lord!!


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The Way

Reading: John 20: 1-18

Jesus’ life and story are marked by a few events that are very significant to our faith.  First, the incarnate birth – born partly human to a mother and partly divine to a heavenly father.  Born of a virgin, without sin since birth.  His birth and the events surrounding it indicate to us that Jesus is a unique and special gift from God.

At the end of His life, Jesus experiences two other significant events.  The resurrection and ascension come close together.  Between His holy birth and divine death, Jesus teaches and heals for about three years, providing us an example of how to live and love both God and our fellow man.

While Jesus did raise people from the dead during His earthly ministry, He raised them back to mortal life.  In the resurrection of Jesus, it was God who raised Jesus to immortal or heavenly life.  Jesus’ resurrection is significant for both of these reasons.  Just as God alone initiated Jesus’ human birth, God alone brings Jesus back home to heaven.  God welcomes Jesus back to His eternal home as Jesus returns to the Father.

The ascension, or returning to God’s right hand, is the second significant event at the end of Jesus’ earthly life.  Jesus tells Mary, “I am returning to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.”  In this statement Jesus declares where He is going and also includes us in the relationship.  God is our Father and our God too.

As Jesus returns to His rightful place beside God, He returns changed.  He has lived on earth.  He has felt what we feel.  He returns to heaven and now intercedes for you and me.  He now stands between God and us.  The perfect lamb who was slain now offers mercy and forgiveness and grace.  He who was without sin now provides the way for us who struggle with sin the way to eternal life.  He ascended so that one day we too could ascend.  For this incomprehensible gift, we say  thanks be to God!