pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: grace


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The Same Love

Reading: Luke 15: 1-3 and 11b-32

Today’s parable is sometimes read as about being lost.  All people experience times when we would consider ourselves to be ‘lost’.  Maybe our time was short, like at college, or maybe it was a longer season in life.  Maybe we had an extended period in life when we lived a life we really do not want to recall.

The younger son in this parable certainly fits this description.  After a period of wild living he comes to place of remorse and returns home.  He know his choices have been wrong and he acknowledges that he has sinned again God and against his earthly father.  Both offer compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and accept him back without any conditions or stipulations.  They treat him like he has never been gone.  That is what is so amazing about grace.  It is a great example and reminder for us.  No matter what we have done and no matter what we have become, God eagerly awaits our return so that we can be reconciled to Him.

The older brother is certainly lost as well.  He may have never physically left the estate, but he seems lost to his father’s love as well.  He reminds me of one who comes to church out of a sense of obligation, just going through the motions and never really connecting to God or anybody.  There but always wanting to be someplace else.  The older son is showing up every day for work because he is supposed to, not because he loves the job or the boss.  We see this manifest itself in his reaction to how his brother is received back home.  Forgiveness is difficult in his hardened heart.  But it is possible.

The father demonstrates the same love for both sons – the physically lost and the spiritually lost.  He runs to both and offers love, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and acceptance.  No matter what we have done and no matter how lost we are, God offers all of His children the same.


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Whenever Necessary

Reading: Psalm 32

Like the psalmist, sometimes we hold onto our sin.  We make a conscious choice not to come before God.  Sometimes this is because even though we know our sin, we hold onto it because we are not ready to repent or because we know that the temptation or the sin is still greater than our will or faith.  Sometimes we do not recognize our sin.  As our faith matures, the concept of what we see as sin also develops.  We come to realize more and more how far short we fall as we come to know and understand God more and more.

When we hold onto our sin, there are ramifications.  Not confessing our sin can weigh upon us emotionally and spiritually and can run us down physically.  Unconfessed sin is a barrier between God and us and inhibits a true relationship with God.  Our heart must be right with God before we can come to Him in prayer and worship.  If we try to do so with sin upon us, it is false prayer or worship.  Just as God could not look upon Jesus on the cross as He bore our sins, God cannot be in our presence if we are not righteous.  To be righteous we must be made clean.

The reality is that God already knows our sins.  The Lord of heaven is also the Lord of the earth.  There is nothing that escapes Him.  We may try to convince ourselves that God doe snot know our sins, but we are only fooling ourselves.  When we humble ourselves, come before God, and pour out our sins, we are blessed by His grace, mercy, and love.  Not only that.  God also removes the guilt and shame of our sins.

When we are in a right relationship with God, He blesses and instructs and loves us.  When we are in a right relationship with God, we wonder why we would ever lived any other way.  When sin is upon us, may we go to God often – whenever necessary – so that we may live all of our days in His presence and in the light of His love.


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Trust and See

A bloom appears in the desert.  Hope rises up our of the midst of despair.  New life stirs as the dust of a tragedy settles.  In all things God works for the good of those who love Him.

God never promised us that life would always be happy and easy.  He did promise us that life would be blessed.  He promised us that His mercies and grace would be new every morning.  He promised that His love would endure.  It is with these promises that we can walk through our times of despair, trial, and tragedy.

As we grow in our faith, God builds us up to be able to go through bad things and to still stay connected to Him.  Jesus is for us that living water that keeps us connected to God.  In our passage for today, Paul speaks of commending themselves in every way – even in the trials, beatings, imprisonments, and hunger.  In these types of things our faith will allow us to rely on God’s grace as well.  Paul ends this section of scripture with these words: “having nothing, yet possessing everything”.  At times we feel totally lost, yet still have our faith and that is everything.

In the good and bad times we rely on God.  He alone has the love, strength, and grace to see us through. These qualities of God are always present but we most need them in times of trial.  Trust in Him and cling to faith – there we will see that God is good.  He is good because His steadfast love endures forever!

Scripture reference: 2 Corinthians 5:20 to 6:10


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Temptations

Jesus was led out into the wilderness after being baptized and receiving God’s personal claim and blessing.  He must have felt pretty good heading out into the desert.  After forty days without food, Satan comes to test Jesus.  Did Satan wait so long hoping that Jesus would forget His baptism experience or so that He was physically weak from the lack of food?  It was probably both.

Doesn’t Satan do the same thing with us?  The tempter knows his game well.  It is just when we are upset with our spouse or best friend that he reminds us of that little idiosyncracy that really bothers us.  It is just when stress at work is at its highest when Satan sends the boss or someone else to add “just one more thing” to the list.  It is just when we are worried most about finances that the unexpected bill arrives.

Jesus was tempted by Satan with three things: food to satisfy His hunger, power to rule over others, and to place self above God or to test God.  All of us have physical needs that must be met.  After forty days without food Satan’s offer would have been hard to resist.  Power is a universal temptation.  All of us like to have power, to be in control.  For each of us the level we desire varies.  The last temptation is the most personal to Satan and perhaps to us as well.  It is why Satan fell from heaven.  Satan wanted to be equal to God.  For me it is not so much about being equal to God but I sometimes question if He loves me as much as He says.  Satan here is tempting Jesus to question that love as well and to test God’s love.  To test God, to question the relationship is to show doubt, to say maybe I do not fully believe you God.  It is the first crack in the armor.

I wrestle often with power, with the need to be in control.  This is a frequent battle.  At times, I also question God.  It is my way of testing that love.  For me, these two struggles are closely related.  When I catch myself doing these things, I repent and am reminded again of God’s great love, mercy, and grace.  This day may I walk closely with You, my God and King.

Scripture reference: Luke 4: 1-13


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Our Promises Too

The story of Jeremiah’s call is the call story many of us receive as well.  Like Jeremiah, God knew each of us before He formed us in the womb.  Like Jeremiah, God has a plan and a role for each of us to play in building His kingdom.  Like Jeremiah, God gives us the gifts, talents, and skills needed for the task.  And like Jeremiah, for most of us, our first response is, “Who, me?”

Who could blame God if He got angry when we respond this way?  It is kind of insulting that we question the omnipotent and omnipresent Creator of the universe and all that is in it.  But God is patient.  The only things that exceed His patience, in my opinion, are His grace and His love.  But He is patient.  When we ignore or deny the call or when we refuse to recognize or acknowledge the gifts and talents He had blessed us with, God just continues to nudge and prod and whisper and to bring before us people and opportunities until we choose to begin walking the path He has laid out for our lives.

We are not the first to question, deny, or run from our call.  Before Jeremiah there were people like Noah, Sarah and Abraham, and Moses – just to name a few.  There have been people like Esther, David, and a slew of others just like us who have taken their turn asking, “Who, me?”. Just as He was with all who have come before and required more than one ask, God was patient and used each one according to His plan.

If you are hesitant to answer God’s call, remember the promises He gave Jeremiah.  They are our promises too.  The first is: do not be afraid.  The second is: I am with you.  The third is: I will rescue you.  His promises are true.  As we live into God’s call upon our lives and as we boldly step out in faith, may we remember and hold onto these promises.  They are our promises too.  As we do so, He will bless us on our faith journey.

Scripture reference: Jeremiah 1: 4-10


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Transform and Lead

John came to prepare the way for the Lord.  In the desert he preached a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  He came to bring a message that would transform people’s hearts and make them ready for Jesus.

The radical changes to the earth that Isaiah wrote about and Luke quotes are very dramatic – valleys are filled in, mountains laid low, and crooked paths made straight.  Powerful things that only God could do.  But John called for and calls today for us to undertake such radical transformations in our lives as well.

As we seek to prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ this Advent season, what valleys or low spots in or lives do we need God to lift us out of?  What mountains or pedestals do we need to step down off of to allow humility in and God to be the one lifted up high?  What crooked paths do we sometimes walk that we need the Holy Spirit to turn us from and to walk alongside us on the narrow path?

We anticipate a time of celebration as we remember Christ’s birth.  We also need to be transformed by and made right with God.  May we allow God to transform us and to lead us in a life that knows His saving grace.  May we prepare Him room in our hearts.

Scripture reference: Luke 3: 3-6


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Thank You God

Thank you God!  Today is a day when we give thanks to God for His many blessings.  We are grateful to be with friends and family and to gather together in fellowship over the meal.  We are thankful for all of our material and physical blessings as well – for job and home and other possessions.  We are richly blessed and it is good to give thanks to our provider.

We are most deeply blessed, though, by our relationship with the living God.  In God we find our Savior and our hope.  Like Job, all we have can fall away, yet we can still count ourselves blessed because we know God and God knows us.  Although hard times will come, we can trust in God in the midst of and through these difficulties.  God is faithful and true.

I am most thankful for His love and mercy.  In my humanity I stumble and I sin.  In these times my love for God fails.  But His love never fails.  In these times, when I repent and seek God again, His mercies flow down upon me like a powerful rain, washing me clean, making me new, drawing me back into that relationship again.  Thank you God.

Scripture reference: Psalm 25: 1-10


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Hope … in a Child

Hannah’s prayer is answered and she gives birth to a son.  After weaning him, Samuel is given to Eli the priest to fulfill her pledge to God: “as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.”  For the end to long years of shame and feelings of inadequacy and out of thanks for God answering her prayers, Samuel is given as a gift to the Lord.

Following these events Hannah offers up a moving prayer to the Lord.  One might expect it to be thanking God for a child or seeking blessings upon his life.  But it is not.  One can read Hannah’s experience into the prayer, but it is much more about God and who God is for us all.  It speaks of no rock like our God.  It reminds us that He raises the faithful up.  It tells us that God raises up the poor and needy to seats of honor.  It warns of what God will bring to those who think they are high and mighty.  The prayer flows with God’s love, grace, mercy, justice, and equality.  The prayer is quite upside down compared to the society of Hannah’s day – and to our’s today as well.

Yet today we still have hope in a child who was born to us, who descended from heaven’s riches and glory to dwell among us and to live a poor and simple life here on earth.  In Jesus we are taught that love, grace, mercy, justice, and equality are what matters and that we are to live our lives sharing these with others.  In Christ we learn that none of thee can be earned but that they are freely given so that we too can freely give them away to others.  Through His promise and by His example, may we do so today.

Scripture reference: 1 Samuel 2: 1-10


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Faith and Mystery

The book of Job has a happy ending.  Job’s suffering ends and God restored him beyond all he had before.  Job is blessed with large herds, many sons, and beautiful daughters.  He lives for 140 years as a very blessed and dies full of life.  One could say all ends well but our questions are left unanswered.  We do not know why Job had to endure this trial.  We do not know Job’s take on what happened either.  In the end we see that God remains mysterious.  For our faith, this mystery is essential.

Try as we might, mankind cannot explain all that is in the world.  There is much that has been figured out but we only seem to be able to go so far.  Great minds have studied and observed and analyzed and calculated to learn much.  We can split atoms and see far into space.  We can trace the evolution and extinction of many species.  We can replace hearts and we can restart hearts.  Yet there is much that cannot be explained by scientists, doctors, mathematicians…  Events and things that happened and happen remain a mystery.  In our world miracles still occur and a shrug of the shoulders is the best explanation that can be offered in intelligent response.

There is still mystery to God as well.  There are may questions that cannot be answered.  The ‘why’ questions of life and death and illness remain as do the ‘how’ of miracles that occur.  There is much we do not know of God.  But there is also much we do know.  God is love, compassion, peace, comfort, understanding, forgiveness, mercy, grace.  He has plans for each of us and those plans are good.  Yet there is still much mystery and this is also good.  Faith and hope are still required of us in our relationship with God.  Faith draws upon trust and experience.  As we live out this life in relationship with God, our faith grows.  In faith and hope, we live with the mystery of God because above all else, we know that God is love.

Scripture reference: Job 42: 10-17


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Our Great High Priest

Jesus is our great high priest, perfect in all ways, full of mercy and grace.  He is one who can sympathize with our human weakness yet is still perfect Himself.  Jesus is holy and blameless and pure – set apart from sinners in this, yet also interceding on our behalf.  What great love the Father has lavished on us through His Son!

Unlike human priests (and pastors) who sin and struggle with life, Jesus forever remains our great high priest.  Jesus will live and serve forever – at least until He returns!  In His role as the great high priest He gives us access to the Father.  He is the conduit through who we can begin to know God.  Jesus also intercedes on our behalf to bring about our salvation.  Lastly, in His time here on earth, Jesus gives us the example of what God’s love lived out looks like.

What does all of this mean for you and me in our daily lives?  It means we have a savior who we can go to and draw strength from at any time and for any need.  It means we have a friend who is on our side.  Even though He sits enthroned beside God almighty, He still intercedes before God on our behalf.  Through the strength He gives and through the intercession He provides, He makes our salvation possible.  On our own we would surely fail.  And Jesus provides us the perfect example of how to live.  Although we will never attain perfection, still we strive to love God and neighbor as Jesus loved them.  Oh perfecter of our faith, oh great high priest, lead us this day and every day!

Scripture reference: Hebrews 7: 23-28