pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: transform


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Heaven Is Near

Reading: Matthew 4: 12-23

Isaiah declared “a light has dawned” in a prophecy he wrote hundreds of years before Jesus lived.  It has been read and looked for ever since.  Matthew proclaims the prophecy fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.  The light of Christ that began to shine about two thousand years ago continues to shine to this day and will shine forever.  The light of Christ dispels darkness, reveals our sins, and guides our way.  The light also brings warmth and love to our days and healing and hope to our hearts.

Jesus declared, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near”.  In the light there can be no darkness, so we must repent.  The kingdom is here, so we must repent , we must change our sinful ways, we must walk as a child of the light.

To repent can be difficult.  To repent can be hard.  To repent can be work.  When we choose to repent, we can be in for a long battle.  Part of repentance means looking deep within ourselves and truly seeing who we are.  Part is also learning to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit that brings conviction when we are tempted and when we sin.  Part of repentance is being in the Word, so we fully understand what the call to be a Christian entails and expects of us.  We are blessed when we repent.  The blessings of repentance are a deepening relationship with Jesus Christ and a better version of ourselves.  When we repent and change our ways, we are being transformed and are becoming more like Christ.

Christ calls us to repentance, but He does not stop there.  His call is also an invitation to walk with Him.  He calls us to repent of our greed, our lust, our judging… and offers us peace, contentment, joy through our relationship with Him. The great healer will take our greed and replace it with generosity.  Our lust will be overcome with love of God and love of neighbor.  Jesus will transform our need to judge into a need to offer understanding, compassion, and justice.  It does not stop with these few things.  Jesus desires to transform all of us to be just like all of Him.

This day, may we search within and repent of all that is dark, seeking to walk fully in the light of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.


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Come and See

Reading: John 1: 35-42

Andrew was alerted to Jesus by the one he followed: John the Baptist.  John saw Jesus and declared, “Look, the Lamb of God”.  Andrew and a friend follow this Jesus, seeking to discover just who He is.  Jesus notices them tagging along and asks, “What do you want”?  They reply with a question, “Where are you staying”?  In other words, they were asking if they could go there and spend some time with Jesus.  They wanted to know who this “Lamb of God” really was.  Jesus invites them, saying, “Come and you will see”.

To spend time with Jesus, Andrew had to be aware of the opportunity.  He could have simply nodded in acknowledgement, and maybe glanced up, when John stated who was passing by.  In our day to day lives we often do this.  We give someone or something a tip of the head or a wave of the hand, but too often we do not really give that person or situation our full attention.  I wonder how many opportunities are missed each day.  But Andrew does not miss this one.  They tag along and spend some time with Jesus.  After spending the day with Jesus, Andrew is convinced of who He is and goes to find his brother, Simon Peter.  Andrew declares, “We have found the Messiah!” and brings his brother to meet Jesus.

Andrew’s actions are great models for us to follow.  His first action was to be mindful of God’s presence in his life.  Andrew latched onto the chance to spend some time with Jesus and it was a transformative experience for him.  Spending time with Jesus will do the same for us.  His second action was to share Jesus, to bring others to Christ.  In this case, he brought his brother.  Once Andrew spent time with and knew who Jesus was, he sought to introduce others to Jesus.  This too is our call: to make new disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

May we each be aware of God’s presence in our lives – both within us personally and also in the world and people around us – so that we can know Jesus and can seek to help others to ‘come and see’ Jesus as well.


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Hallelujah

Reading: John 1:1-14

Our Savior is born!  Hallelujah!  The babe lies in a manger, wrapped in swaddling cloths.  Mary and Joseph must have been beaming but tired parents.  Jesus has been born!

The baby we celebrate grew up to be a man.  Jesus was full of wisdom and compassion.  There was power to heal and to give life in His hands and in His voice.  He spoke with authority and amazed all who heard Him; He even confounded a few.  Jesus was God in the flesh, living life fully as one of us.

As a man Jesus spoke words that transformed lives.  Jesus offered grace upon grace, all poured out in God’s love.  It is a love we share.  It is a love that comes to dwell in each of us. As children of God, we become a fellow servant with Jesus Christ.  Through His name we go forth to bring healing to our broken world.  In the power of Jesus’ name we partake in the transformation of the world.

For this wonderful gift of Christ and His continuing presence in the world, we say thanks be to God!  Hallelujah!


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Living, Not Just Knowing

Reading: Luke 21: 5-9

The disciples are looking at the beauty and wealth of the temple.  People go to the great cathedrals of the world and marvel at the stone work and stained glass.  Visitors to museums stand in amazement before the painting of the Last Supper or some other religious portrait.  We go to our churches and think, “What a great place this is”!

Jesus says to just hold on a minute.  He says that one day the temple will be no more.  One day those cathedrals will be gone too.  One day that artwork will fade.  One day…  Jesus goes on to warn them that one day false prophets will come, trying to charm us into believing other stories.  Jesus warns us not to be deceived.  If all our faith is is in the things – the buildings, the artwork, the campus – then we will be lost when our faith is shaken or tested.  Instead, our faith must be in Jesus.

There can be danger here too.  If we read all the stories of Jesus and appreciate all He said and are amazed at what He did, but do not go any deeper than knowing the stories, then we have simply created another empty building.  The words must travel the short distance from our heads to our hearts.  The words must take on understanding and application.  It is at this level the they begin to transform our lives.  When we allow Jesus to come alive in our hearts, we begin to be transformed and to live out our faith instead of simply knowing our faith.

If our faith is built upon a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then we do not need a building to visit Jesus in.  Jesus is not a building.  He lives in us.  If Jesus lives in us, we will not be deceived by false prophets or drawn in by the lies of the world.  He will guide us from within our hearts.  Lord Jesus, reign in me today!  Jesus, be alive in my heart!


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Blessings

Reading: Hebrews 13: 1-8 and 15-16

Throughout the New Testament we are reminded to love as Jesus loved and to be a servant to all.  The examples abound and the expectations are clear.  The idea that whenever we “do this for the least of these” (Matthew 25:40), we do for Jesus.  We are called to do as Jesus would have done.  Jesus loved all people where they were at and gave to each as they had need.  There was never one that came to Jesus and was rebuffed or ignored.  He treated all with love.

Verse 8 of today’s reading states, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”.  Who Jesus is does not change.  He loves all people still.  He will love all people forever.  As Jesus’ agents of love, we are to continue to live out our lives as Jesus did, offering love and care to all.  In doing so, people come to experience Jesus and His presence in their lives too.  It is a blessing to them.

But perhaps it is a greater blessing to us.  In following Jesus’example and living out our call to be Jesus’ light in our world, we are in His presence each and every time we offer His love to another.  We are reminded that Jesus is in us each time we serve another.  Each time we do so we too are touched by His love.  It is a blessing to us.  In the process we too are changed as we are increasingly transformed more and more into the image and likeness of Christ.

As we share Christ’s love and offer ourselves as living sacrifices for God’s glory, the world is impacted by love.  So are we.  Today may we be pleasing to the Lord our God in all we do and say.  May the blessings ever flow!


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In Spirit and Truth

Reading: Isaiah 1: 11-15

Isaiah writes to a people who are simply going through the motions with God.  They may be offering sacrifices and saying the corporate prayers but their hearts are far from God.  They may be doing all the ‘right’ things according to the Law, but they are far from the intent and reason for worship.  Their worship is not connecting them to God.  Since they are not connecting to God, they are not experiencing God’s presence in their lives.  They leave worship and leave God in the synagogue or temple.

In the New Testament, Jesus echoes Isaiah’s call.  Jesus calls on us to worship God in spirit and in truth.  Worshipping God in spirit involves us in connecting to God’s spirit in worship.  In worship we can connect to God in an intimate and personal way.  In doing so we come to know the Creator’s will and purpose for our lives.  We too often come to worship expecting to ‘get’ something.  Worship is about offering ourselves to God and allowing God to transform us into who we were created to be as a child of God.

When we worship in spirit then God’s truth will shape and form how we live.  When we worship in truth we are honest and open to what God speaks into our hearts and are willing to go where God leads.  The fruit of authentic and real worship is revealed in how God transforms us.  When we worship in truth we are led to repentance, to seeking to bring God’s love into the world, to do good in our world.  Through God’s transforming power we are conformed more and more into living as Christ lived in the world, bringing glory and honor to God in all we do.

When we worship in spirit and truth, we worship in a way that is open to God working in our lives.  We come to God with the desire to be transformed, filled up, and sent out into the world to live for God.  May we offer all we have and all we are to God in worship this day, allowing God’s spirit and truth to transform us into the likeness of Christ, bringing His light and love to the world in need.


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New Creation 

Reading: Colossians 3: 1-11

Paul calls for a transformation from our old self that is of the world into a new self that is made in Christ’s image.  To accomplish this change we need the help of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot make this transition on our own.  It can be something we desire and even something we feel led to, but the power to transform human lives into eternal lives rests in God’s hands alone.

God’s love and grace are always reaching out to us, ever seeking to draw us closer to that love and grace.  We are born with an innate sense of God and good in us, with a spark of the divine, so to speak.  As we naturally see God’s love in the world, we do so through the spark of the divine that is within all humanity.

Early on life, God’s grace begins working in our lives.  John Wesley would call this prevenient grace, the grace that comes before.  It’s that grace on the doorstep of our life, inviting us into a relationship with God.  As we step through that door and begin to grow in our faith, this grace becomes justifying grace – that grace that helps us see the world as God sees it and to live our lives by God’s ways and will.  As we mature in our faith, God’s sanctifying grace begins to work in our lives, drawing us ever closer to Jesus, ever closer to perfection.  Although we never reach perfection in our earthly bodies, it is ever the goal.

To accomplish all this, Paul calls us to “put to death” all that is inside of us that does not draw us closer to God.  It is emotions, desires, drives, idols, friends, places, habits, … all that stands between us and God.  It is through faith in God and through the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives that we continue on our journey of faith, step by step, ever drawing closer to our Lord.  May God strengthen us all on our journey.


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Simply Love 

Reading: Hosea 11: 5-11

We have a varied view of God.  Since God is vast and far beyond human understanding, it makes sense that we cannot pin down an exact image or view of God.  On one end of the spectrum we see God as judge and in that role God decides on consequences and hands out punishment for our choices.  On the other end we see God as love, giver of new mercies every morning and of endless grace and other blessings.

God is just and in our relationship expects obedience and faithfulness from us.  In the Old Testament God gave the people the covenant to uphold and the Law to follow, with its accompanying sets of sacrifices.  In the New Testament God brought the new covenant into being through the life and witness of Jesus Christ.  In the latter part of the New Testament and for us today, God gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us.  Even though we have all of this to help us be obedient and to follow God’s will and ways for our lives, we so often fail.  Even when we fail, God loves us.  Even when we fail time after time, God continues to love us.

The constant giving of love, mercy, and forgiveness that we experience from God transforms our lives.  We are made new creations, without blemish, every time we seek God’s throne of grace.  We are drawn in over and over and over again into God’s transforming love, marvelling that it is never withheld, that it is never conditional, and that it is given without cost.  God simply loves us, imperfect and sinful as we are.  God simply loves us.  For this we say, thanks be to God.


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Fully and Wholly

Reading: Amos 8: 1-6

God proclaims to Amos that “the time is ripe for my people”.  God is fed up with their preoccupation with money.  Worship is no longer worship.  They want to rush through their one hour of worship so that they can get back to turning a profit.  To make matters worse, during their one hour ‘given’ to God their mind is filled with thoughts of how to get richer.  The fact that they do not hear God’s message and call upon their hearts is revealed in the ways they exploit the poor and needy.

God’s desire is the same for us.  When we sit down to spend time with God, He expects all of our being to be present.  Our call is not to read the devotional or accompanying scripture as quickly as possible so that we can continue on with our day.  God desires for us to linger a while, to allow His Word and message for us that day to soak in and to percolate deep within us.  Our time with God should draw us in and transform and renew us.

The same is true on a Sunday morning or whenever we gather for worship.  We are called to enter His house with thanksgiving in our hearts and praise on our lips.  We are to be fully in His presence and to welcome the Spirit to move in us and around us.  God hopes to touch our souls with the music, the words, the prayers.  If our focus is elsewhere, we are not being authentic in our worship and we are not being honest in our relationship with God.

Each time we enter into His presence, whether in private or with our community of faith, may we be fully focused and wholly in His presence.


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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.