pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: thanks


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Love Eternal

Reading: Luke 20: 27-38

It is odd that the Sadducees ask Jesus a question about relationships in heaven when they themselves do not believe in the resurrection.  They thought long and hard about how to ask a question with a hypothetical problem whose circumstances are based solidly in the Law of Moses.  The hypothetical location of this problem is heaven.  No one, including us, really knows exactly what heaven will be like.  The exception is, of course, Jesus.  He has been there in heaven so he can answer their ridiculous question from a position of authority.

I can picture Jesus’ smile turning to a grin as He begins to answer their question.  He begins by explaining that our earthly relationships will be secondary at best in heaven.  The only relationship that will matter in heaven, Jesus says in essence, is that we are the children of God.  In other words, the only relationship that will really matter in heaven will be our relationship with the Lord.  It will be true in the eternal but it is also true here in the temporal.  Relationships with spouses, family, friends, and so on makes life here much more pleasant and enjoyable.  But many here have these relationships but no relationship with God.  For these, their eternity will be much different than for those who claim a personal relationship with Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

Jesus explains to the Sadducees that to God we are all alive, whether living or dead.  This is clearly true now.  Jesus says it will also be true in heaven.  The constants are God’s love for us and our status as children of God.  Although we do not clearly know what we will be like in heaven, we do know that some representation of us will be with God if we have a personal relationship with Jesus while here on earth.  At least the part of us that has a relationship with God will remain alive with God in heaven.  To me, this is our spirit or soul.  But this is a guess at best.  What we do know is that God’s love never ends and that it remains the same here on earth as it will one day be in heaven.  For God’s unfailing love and eternal claim bonus ad children of God, we say thanks be to God.


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On Our Hearts

Reading: Jeremiah 31: 27-34

In my limited mind, understanding the depth of God’s love can be hard to fathom.  Because of my own struggles to forgive at times, it can be hard to comprehend God’s willingness to forgive my sins over and over and over… In my life, in my own experiences with how easy it can be to withhold love, it is hard to fully wrap my head around the fact that God always loves me, no matter what I’ve done or said.

The passage from Jeremiah marks a shift in God’s relationship with the people.  In the past, the Law has been God’s primary tool for faithfulness and obedience.  With the Law there were consequences and rewards.  With the Law there were times when separation and punishment were used to realign the people’s minds with God’s ways.  Over time the Law grew and grew to try and cover every possibility of sin.  But it also became so cumbersome that it was impossible to keep all of the Law.  Failure was all but guaranteed.  So God offered a new way.

God opted for a new covenant based upon a personal heart relationship with each of us.  Instead of a mountain of Laws, God instead offered mountains of love and grace and mercy.  Instead if the unending stream of sacrifices, God instead offered up, once and for all, the perfect sacrifice of Jesus.  It is through Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit that we can enter into a personal heart relationship with God.  It is in this personal relationship that God’s ways are written upon our heart.  It is through this relationship that our lives begin to reflect God’s love and grace and mercy.  Verse 33 states, “I will be their God and they will be my people”.  Thanks be to God that we are claimed as God’s children, loved and forgiven, so that we too may offer God’s gift to our broken world.  Thanks be to God!


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At the Start

Reading: Psalm 5: 1-8

The psalmist writes, “in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation”.  What a beautiful thought this is!  The psalmist has found value in beginning the day with God.  We are promised that His mercies are new every morning as well.  Each day we can come to God, beginning each day with a clean slate, and can invite God to be a part of our day.

It is important to thank God for His blessings of the day before.  To consciously thank God for each blessing prepares us to expect them again in the day ahead.  It also places us in the proper, humbled place.  We must also spend time confessing our sins before God.  It is so important to re-establish a right relationship with God each morning.  This act also serves to remind us of our dependence on God and of our inability to succeed on our own.

Then we can come to God and lay out requests down before Him.  We can look ahead into our day and week and we can invite God into those events and situations that we need guidance and direction on and into those things that bring us fear and worry.  Again, we are calling on God to enter into our weakness and to be our strength.  We are calling on He who can do all we cannot.

In inviting God into our day and seeking His presence in the day, we begin our day well.  We lay the groundwork to experience God throughout the day.  In admitting our need each day for Him, we elevate God and place ourselves in our proper place of humble servant.  Lord, may all that we are and all that we will be this day depend on You.  May we live this day with You as Lord and Savior, guide and friend.


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Peace, Justification, Mercy

Reading: Romans 5: 1-2

Our faith brings peace with God, a status of being justified, and an outpouring of His grace.  Once we have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord of our life, we are made into a new creation within our new relationship with Him.  Through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which we celebrated yesterday on Pentecost, we are forever changed.

Instead of living with the fears and worries of the world, we now walk in God’s peace.  We walk here because we know that as a new creation we are a child of God.  We are now in His hands.  Our hope rests secure.

The Spirit of God works in us to justify us or to make us right before God.  Through the act of taking on all of our sins on the cross, Jesus paid the price for those sins.  Justice has been administered so we do not need to live under the weight of our sins.  Because of His blood that was shed, our sins are atoned for.  All we need to do to be justified before God is to repent and to confess our sins.  Then we again can walk in His ways.  We bear no punishment; the price has been paid.  Therefore, once we seek His forgiveness, we are again justified before God.

Through faith in Christ we go one step further: mercy.  Forgiveness says our sins are not held against us.  Mercy says they are forgotten.  This is a big step.  As humans we tend to forgive but not to forget.  But not so with God.  There is no giant Rolodex of our sins in heaven.  Once we repent and confess our sins to God, His mercy kicks in and for God our sins are no more.  This demonstrates the depth of His love for each of us.  Nothing we can do lessens His love for us.  For the peace He brings, for the justified relationship He offers, and for the mercy that makes us pure as new fallen snow, we simply say thanks be to God.


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Let Us Rejoice

Reading: Psalm 118: 1-2 & 19-29

The Psalm opens with a timeless line: “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever”.  These three truths form some of the bedrock of our faith.  If one took the time, we could each list the many ways that we have personally experienced each of these truths in our lives.  As we grow in our faith, we come to appreciate each of these truths more and more.

The relationship we have with God is the overarching relationship in our life.  He actively seeks to guide and protect us, to bless us, and to bring us joy.  God desires to answer our prayers, to bring us success, and to receive our praise.  He is our strength in times of doubt, our courage in times of fear, our comforter in times of suffering, and our light in times of darkness.  Our relationship with God is the relationship which we should model all of our other relationships after.

For our part, we offer God our thanksgiving and praise for all He brings to the relationship.  Our grateful response is to seek to bring others into this relationship as well.  Jesus commanded all of His followers to go forth to make new disciples.  Jesus set the example for what our relationships with God and fellow man should look like and then said to go and do likewise, to love others as He first loved us.  We do this by being love, goodness, strength, courage, comfort, and light to those in our lives.

The psalmist also wrote, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”.  As we seek to emulate Christ and to bring Him to the corners of our world, we too will be blessed.  As we share the light and love of Christ with others, we too will be blessed.  Verse 24 reads, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it”.  Each day is a day the Lord has made.  May we go out daily into our world rejoicing in all He has done for us, drawing others into our joy and praise, into His love and hope.


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Giving Thanks and Looking Forward

2015 ends today.  Tomorrow is the start of 2016.  Today is Thursday.  Tomorrow will be Friday.  In one sense, today is just another day.  While all this is true, there is still something special about the coming to the end of one year and the anticipation of a new year about to come.

People often celebrate at the end of the year.  As people of God we too should celebrate all that He has done to touch our lives in the past year.  As we look back over the year, may we offer our thanks to God for the guidance, blessings, and love He has poured out upon us.  May we also give thanks for the opportunities we have had to share His message and His love with others.  And lastly, may we give Him thanks for the times when His strength and love were all that carried us through.

As 2016 is about to dawn, we also must look forward to the new year.  We wonder what all God has in store for us.  We wonder how and where we will grow in our relationship with God and anticpate the ways He will use us in 2016 to be His light and love and hope in our world.  May we enter into the new year as eager disciples, seeking to draw ever closer to God in our walk of faith and seeking to be ever more like Jesus in our walk in the world.

Scripture reference: Psalm 147: 12-20


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This Amazing Love

“God’s Love and Ours” is the title to the section in my Bible that contains 1 John 4: 7-21.  It is all about God’s and Jesus’ love for us and our love for our fellow man.  It is about how our love ought to reflect His perfect love.  The word ‘love’ appears over 25 times in this passage.  Seems that this love thing must be important in our lives.

If we were to look at Jesus’ ministry and to come up with one word to describe it, that word would be love.  In all He did love was at the core.  In all He did.  This example that Jesus set for us is the goal of our lives.  It is how we shine our light.

God’s love also continually pours out upon us.  His love can be found in us and all around us.  If we were to analyze our day, we would find many “God sightings” sprinkled throughout our day.  Some of these would be points where we experienced God’s love for us, some would be points where we shared His love with others, and some would be points where others shared His love with us.

A lot of the time we take this amazing love for granted.  Sometimes I am sure we do not even notice it.  Our days can be so busy that by the time we get to the end of the day, we just want to relax.  But it is important to acknowledge and give thanks for His love.  Whether in your mind or on a piece of paper, take a minute right now to consider where all you experienced God’s love yesterday.  Smile and give thanks.  Repeat each day.

Scripture reference: 1 John 4: 7-21


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He Knows. And He Still Loves.

God knows each of us intimately.  Simultaneously that thought can be comforting and alarming.  There is nothing we can do to change this – it is just the nature of the God to know His creations that well.

Psalm 139 speaks of God knowing our thoughts from afar, of being familiar with all of our ways, and of even knowing our words before we speak.  God is so in tune with us.  God is that best of friends who can finish our sentences for us.  And He is so much more!  All of these things can bring one great comfort.  To know that God is so connected to us is amazing and wonderful.

He is also that connected when we are lesser than we can be.  God is also there when we sin.  He is there when we think about sinning.  And he still loves us.  That is amazing.  No matter our unkind thoughts, our misdeeds, or our out and out sins – God still loves us.  The psalmist ends verse six with the admission that all of this is too wonderful for him, almost inconceivable.  This is true for us too.  And what is our repsonse?  Thank you God!  Thank you for loving even me!!

Scripture reference: Psalm 139: 1-6


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Loving Generously and Freely

“God loves a cheerful giver.”  This is true.  It is not true because it puts money in the church coffers.  It is true because of the spirit it instills in us.  When we are willing to be abundant without strings attached and with no expectations involved, then we are truly giving as God gives.

When we are willing to be generous with all that God blesses us with, we see things as God’s and not as ours.  He owns everything we have.  If that is the perspective from which we operate, then we are so much more willing to give to others.

As Advent nears and Thanksgiving Day dawns, can you feel the call to slow down and focus on the things and ways of God?  Do you feel the call to be generous instead of greedy?  Do you feel the urge to give thanks and to express your gratitude by blessing others as well?  May our lives reflect God’s way of loving generously and freely!

Scripture reference: 2 Corinthians 9: 6-15


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Allow Him

Think about a time when you felt trapped in a situation or when you felt that you were being treated unjustly.  If it got desperate you were looking for any way out.  At that point you would have taken a hand or a piece of good advice from about anyone.We’ve all been there.  And if we cried out to God for help, He was right there to share the burden or to maybe send relief or show a way out.  In need, we seek Him.

Yet in our day to day, how often we simply go it alone.  Even when it gets a bit hard, we put our head down – not to pray but to barrel through, to try and do it on our own.  God so wants us to seek Him, to be our all in all.  God will even send people across our paths that can offer a hand or a good counsel, but how often we miss them.  It is sometimes hard to look up when our head is bent down.

If we come to God each day with all of our thanks and with all of our needs, then we are more open to seeking His presence and allowing Him to lead in our lives.  The more we choose to honestly connect, the better the connection, the more in touch with God that we are.  Allow Him to draw near and to help carry that burden.

Scripture reference: Judges 4: 1-9