pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: Jesus


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What Are Your Days?

Each and every year the people of Israel celebrate the Passover.  It was their touchstone moment in their relationship with God.  In a grand show of His love for them, God rescued Israel from bondage.  For them it was important to remember, to recall, and to give thanks.

We Christians also celebrate moments where God touched the lives of humanity.  Each and every year we remember the gift of Jesus’ birth and the great sacrifice Jesus made on the cross.  We back that up with celebrating the resurrection and all that brought to humankind.  Once we know the stories and their importance, we do not stop celebrating the events.  We celebrate Christmas and Easter each and every year – to reconnect, to remember, and to give thanks for our relationship with Him and to give thanks for all He does for us.

What personal faith moments do you celebrate?  Is it your baptism (or the date of it if you were an infant) or your confirmation?  Is it the day you entered into a personal relationship with Jesus?  Is it the day you were married…?  These events or moments are essential to remember, to recall, to reflect, and to celebrate.  So… what are your days?

Scripture reference: Exodus 12: 1-10


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Still at Work

The Bible is our history book.  There are many people and stories that we recall, study, and know by heart.  They teach us who God is, what we are called to be like as people of faith, and show us examples of faithful witness.  As we look back into our history book of faith, we can see God at work in the lives of the people and places in the stories and accounts.

Since the time of Jesus and the disciples, faithful servants have continued to teach us what faith is and how we are to live in our world as disciples of Christ.  People like Martin Luther, Calvin, and Mother Teresa continue to explain and define who we are as a people of God.  We can look back on their lives and see the hand of God at work here as well.

In each of our denominations and local churches, our histories contain people and events that have shaped us.  For example, John Wesley had tremendous influence on the Methodist and Wesleyan movements and churches.  In our local churches it is a beloved pastor or a lay members viewed as a ‘saint’ plus significant local events that define who and what we are as a congregation.  And through all of these local people and events, we can see God at work too.  He continues to be present and active in our world.

People very likely look at your life too.  Maybe it is your student or your patient or your coworker or your exercise classmate.  Each of us is part of the story of God at work in our world.  He is still at work.  As we live as salt and light in the world. we are co-laborers with Christ.  May we labor well!

Scripture reference: Psalm 105: 1-6, 23-26, and 45c


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Claim All That He Offers

“Keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.  Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” – Romans 12: 11-12

It can be hard to always love others.    It can be hard to always be ‘Christian’ towards others.  It can even be hard to treat our brothers and sisters in Christ with love all the time.  These words of Paul provide us with some insights and guidance for how to love all in a manner worthy of Christ’s love.

‘Keeping our spiritual fervor’ involves staying in love with God – one of Reuben Job’s ‘Three Simple Rules’.  When we are in love with God we naturally want to serve others and to meet the needs we can meet.  We stay in love with God by practicing our spiritual disciplines – worship, prayer, study, fasting, …

When we are ‘joyful in hope’ we are living into the belief that Jesus will be there for us.  We are expectant that He will be present to us and as we live with hope in our hearts, we are filled with joy.  When we are ‘patient in affliction’ we are living into the belief that although we endure for a moment, that Jesus will be there when we reach the other side or the end of our present situation.  In the midst of trial, we know that He is there with us and will be there always.  This allows for patience.  With patience we can gain much from the trials of life.  When we are ‘faithful in prayer’ we are living into the belief that through talking with Jesus we draw nearer to Him and draw strength from Him.

Though these four practices we equip ourselves to better love all we encounter each day.  This blessing from Hebrews 13 is also ours if we claim it: “May the God of peace equip you with every good thing that you may do His will, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.”  He wants to equip us with spiritual fervor, joyful hope, patient enduring, and a faithful prayer life.  May we claim all that He has to offer as we live daily with Christ.

Scripture reference: Romans 12: 9-21


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Da Nile and the Cross Beside It

So often our stumbling blocks are tha things of men.  It is too easy to let our life revolve around our position at work or how our bank account looks or what other people think of us.  In our humanity, it is pretty easy to be human!  But we can also stumble on heavenly things.  For example, at times we can allow doubt or fear to keep us from doing what God calls us to.

Jesus calls us to deny self and to take up our cross to follow Him.  There are two parts here.  First, we are called to deny self.  When we deny self we are putting all others above ourself and our needs, desires, interests, wants…  ALL others above self.  That is not just family, close friends, maybe a few people from the church.  It is also that coworker you really don’t like that much and that homeless lady you walk by on the way to your car.  But certainly when we deny self, we have more to offer to others.

The second part of this call is to take up our cross.  For Jesus, His cross led to the greatest gift ever and also to His physical death.  For us, our cross is both what we can offer to our broken world and a spiritual death to the things that keep us from fully following Jesus Christ.  For Jesus, His cross held all of our sins and He took it up and bore it for our salvation, the forgiveness of our sins.  On Jesus’ cross was love for mankind.  Love was truly the gift Jesus had to offer.  He denied self to love others fully.

It makes me wonder – what gift for mankind is on my cross or on your cross?  Maybe it is our gifts and talents that are on our crosses.  So when we deny self, it is what we have to offer to our fellow man.  If compassion is our gift, then when one denies self and takes up their cross, is it compassion that flows out?  If ones gift is teaching, then when one denies self and pours themselves into being a teacher, is it learning that pours out for others?

Scripture reference: Matthew 16: 21-28


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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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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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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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His Constant Presence

After feeding the 5000, Jesus sends the crowd and the disciples off and takes the time to go up the mountain to pray.  As night falls, He walks out to the disciples, who have been struggling against the wind.  In faith, Peter even takes a few steps on the water.  As they climb into the boat, the winds die down.  What they had been struggling against is taken away by Jesus’ presence.  In response they say, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

I wonder why we at times recognize Jesus as so much more and at other times fail to even notice His presence.  For the disciples, why does Jesus walking on the water and calming the wind draw such a response when feeding 5000 from a couple fish and a few loaves does not?  Yet we are the same.  Why does seeing someone’s cancer suddenly disappear seem so much more than a simple day blessed by God’s presence?  Isn’t God as present in one as in the other?

We are drawn to the big and flashy but God also resides in the day to day as well.  It is from His constant presence that we truly draw our strength.  Today, may we notice God in all of the little things of life.  And at the end of the day, may we sing His praises for this gift.

Scripture reference: Matthew 14: 22-33