pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

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Tax Collector Witness

Reading: Luke 18: 9-14

The tax collector is honest and direct with God: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner”.  As this man who stands at a distance and won’t even look up towards heaven utters these words, it is easy to imagine tears running down his cheeks and a little crackle in his voice.  He comes to the temple with his sins heavy upon him.  He comes to simply do what he needs to do: to lay his sins before God.  This tax collector knows that God’s mercy alone can remove these sins from his life.  He is humble and honest before God.  He recognizes God’s sovereignty and God’s love.

The tax collector is a great witness to the faith for us.  First, he realizes who he is, honesty admits it before God, and acknowledges that God alone can restore him.  Too often we instead live with ‘secret’ sins in our lives.  Access is easy to many addictions.  We rationalize our greed and jealousy as simply wanting the best in life.  The line of excess and gluttony is easily crossed.  The pull of gossip and being judgemental is great.  Like the tax collector, our guilt often weighs down upon us.

Second, the tax collector knows his great need for God.  In our independent, free choice, I’ll do what’s best for me culture, it’s easy to think that we are the center, that we are in control.  Yet, like the tax collector demonstrates, only in God do we find true power and love.  It is only when we enter humbly into God’s presence that we find true healing for our brokenness.  It is only when we admit that we have no power to remove the guilt and shame of our sin that God can restore us, can make us new again.

O merciful God, allow us to see the sins in our lives.  Make us humble as we enter into your presence, pour out your power and grace upon our lives.  Like the tax collector, restore us to a right relationship with you.


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Focus

Reading: 2 Timothy 2: 8-15

At times in life things can get ahold of out attention or focus and can dominate our thoughts.  Sometimes they are good things like that new baby a young couple just had.  Their mind drifts to the new baby when they are at work and when they are with the baby they cannot think of anything else.  Sometimes things like whether or not we will get the job we just interviewed for or the failing health of a loved one can dominate our focus and our thoughts.

For Paul, his singular focus was Jesus Christ.  Nothing else really mattered to him.  After Paul encountered Jesus on that road to Damascus, Jesus was his all in all.  Whether Paul was in plenty or in want, Jesus was his focus.  Whether Paul was in chains or freely wandering the city, Jesus was his focus.  Whether Paul was preaching to the crowd or talking quietly with Timothy, Jesus was his focus.  Paul understood the promise of salvation through Jesus Christ alone and he firmly held onto this promise.  It became the main focus of what he wanted to share with all he met.  Paul wanted all people to have a personal relationship with Jesus.  He saw no barriers to this for anyone except the person’s individual refusal so Paul worked tirelessly to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We too are called to have this same focus – to always have Jesus Christ as our focus.  In the way we live our life, in the words we speak, in the actions we take, in the things we refrain from, in the times we reach out to the needy and the lost – in all things we must share Jesus with others.  Through us others must see and feel and come to know Jesus’ love and the promise of salvation found in Jesus alone.  May we be all in for Jesus each day so that all may be in one day.


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The Circle

Reading: Hebrews 12: 18-24

Hebrews 12 offers a new perspective on God.  The God embodied in Jesus is the same God whose voice can thunder and who can be terrifying.  God is unchanging.  What changes or evolves is our understanding of God.  Stand at the window and watch and listen to the power in a magnificent thunderstorm.  Witness God’s voice booming!  Sit with a family that has just lost a loved one who they think was not saved, witness the unspoken questions and fear.  Consider the conviction we feel when we sin.  We quickly repent and seek forgiveness so that we are back in God’s love and away from the terrifying feeling of being outside of God’s love.

Through Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit we experience God differently.  God is now more personal, more easily accessed.  Jesus and the Holy Spirit function as more open conduits to heaven and God’s love.  In Jesus the man we saw the living God, first on earth and now in heaven.  Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is “the mediator of a new covenant” where grace and forgiveness comes through His blood sacrificed on the cross.  It is a free gift to us all.  It costs us nothing.  What a change in the previous relationship!  Jesus is also the mediator that stands between us and God and with the Holy Spirit intercedes for each of us.  This is what has changed, not God.

Faith and our response to it has also changed significantly.  Before Christ’s time on earth, faith in God was seen as an exclusive thing.  Either you were part of God’s chosen people, or you were not.  Jews were in, everyone else was out.  Faith led the Jews to care for one another, to live a life of obedience to God’s ways, and to worship God alone.  Jesus changed who was in the circle.  Through Jesus, all people are chosen people.  There are no limits or exclusions to the new covenant.  There is now no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free, …  We are to be Jesus’ hands and feet, loving all people with a servant’s heart.  We are to be Jesus’ voice, offering the good news to all peoples of all nations, ever working to expand the circle, ever seeking to build the kingdom here on earth.

What role shall we play today?  How will we each be a part of widening the circle, of helping another to step inside so they too can know God’s love?


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Redemption 

Reading: Psalm 107: 1-9

Sometimes as Christians it can be easy to settle into a comfortable faith.  The further we get from that last big brush with grace, the less we remember what redemption feels like.  It is in those times that we really struggle and Christ sweeps in to our rescue that we feel the strongest expressions of grace and forgiveness and redemption.  Once we get past those times when struggles were common in our early walk of faith, we can slip into a sort of cruise control.  Then it can be easy to forget that others are still in a struggle.  We lose touch with what it feels like to be held captive to something.

There are many people that struggle in life.  The battle may be with things such as drugs and alcohol.  It may be pornography.  It may be abuse.  It may be due to forces such as injustice or oppression.  It may be cultural or economic.  When we ourselves forget what redemption and that taste of freedom was like, we can lose our drive to help others find freedom from whatever is holding them captive.

The true freedom we find in Christ is the only real freedom from all that binds and holds humanity captive.  In our struggles we may succeed in the battle for a short time when we fight it on our own.  But Satan always regains a foothold when we try to do it alone because in us there is weakness.  It is only when we call on the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ that can find redemption from all that binds us.  It is by His strength alone that we have a chance in this battle.  But all who do not know Christ cannot call on His name.

As faithful disciples of Jesus Christ it is our call and charge to make the good news known to all people.  It is our call to share Christ with who struggle with the powers of this world so that all may come to know the redeeming and freeing power of Christ.  Only in Christ is true freedom found.  May we share Jesus and His redeeming love this day with all who are held captive to sin so that Christ may set them free.


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This Day, O Lord

In the world there are fools and wise people, evil doers and the righteous.  For the Christian, for me, it is a constant battle to live wisely and as a righteous person.  Both the internal and external challenges are plentiful each day.  It is only with His strength that one has a chance at being wise and righteous.

Unfortunately at times I can live foolishly and can be far from God.  In these times, what I think or say lacks more integrity.  I fall into self-indulgence and do not hold myself accountable.  I fail to remain close to God at all times.  But on these days and in these moments, if I am quick to respond to the Holy Spirit’s prompting, then I can find redemption and return to the path God intends for me.

Living wisely and seeking to be righteous is a plan that requires something more than I naturally have in me.  I must work at building up God’s presence in my life through the daily practices of prayer, stud, confession, meditation, and worship.  This connection to God allows me to reach out more quickly when temptation comes my way.  This connection sensitized me more to the Spirit’s convictions and promptings.

In living connected to and aligned with God, I more easily see the world and its needs as He does.  I come to know that God loves all people equally.  It is His will to come to those in need and to do all we can for them.  It is His will that His name be made known to the ends of the earth.  It is His will to live in a harmonious relationship with each of us.  This day, O Lord, may I live in step with You.  This day, O Lord, may I be your servant in all the places you put me today.

Scripture reference: Psalm 14


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Called to Light

In the Gospel of John he speaks frequently of the light and eternal life.  He speaks of Jesus being the light that shines in the darkness and how the lights shows things as they are.  We are intended to live in the light that is shed by Jesus, God’s Son.

John draws some contrasts for us: living and perishing, saved and condemned, doing right and doing evil.  Depending on the day and the moment, we all live somewhere along these continuums.  We all want to permanently be on the living/saved/doing right end of the line, but the reality is that we are imperfect and fail now and then.

The messages of the world and our own human tendencies pull us towards the perishing/condemned/doing evil end of the spectrum. It is a constant battle.  The Holy Spirit, through the power of Jesus, is always shining the light into our darkness.  The light dispels the dark and exposes us for what we are.

Broken yet redeemed.  Sinful yet forgiven.  Lost yet found.  Human yet loved by God Almighty.  We are each loved enough that God sent His only Son to die for each of us.  Jesus came, died, and was resurrected not to condemn but to save.  He came to bring eternal life.  He came to shine light into darkness.  We are called to live into these truths.  What is our response?

John 3: 14-21