Made Alive

Romans 6: 6 – 7

Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

This is a wonderful bit of good news this morning. You have been freed from sin that once hampered you and, furthermore, your old self has died having been crucified on the cross with Jesus himself. If there is some habit, sin or condition that has plagued you for years, understand that you are dead to it as soon as you acknowledge that the old man who, was you, died on that cross. You were raised up as a new creature in Christ Jesus at Jesus’ resurrection. You are a full partaker of the resurrection.

If you died, then sin can no longer hold you. It was in the old man and the old man is dead. The new creature who was raised in Christ is the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Ok, does that mean that you never, ever sin or fall short of the mark? Not necessarily, but it does mean that you are no longer a slave to sin. Sin no longer owns you. You have been purchased with the precious blood of Jesus so that you are in the Kingdom of righteousness instead of the camp of the enemy. You are free from the bondage of sin, and it no longer has a hold on you. You just have to make sure that you no longer have a hold on it. Jesus has set you free, but you need to stand up and walk out of the prisoner of war camp. Don’t hang out there anymore. Your freedom has been purchased.

You have died to sin and are free of the torment that it brings. No matter what hold sin had on you, you are now dead to it. Don’t go to the grave and resurrect that which Jesus has freed you from. No matter what habit held you, know that Jesus took that to the cross with him so that you could participate in his resurrection as your new self; clean and washed in the blood of the lamb. Celebrate your new self today. You are a glorious new creature in Christ Jesus.

Fruitful Speech

Proverb 18:20-21

With the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach will be satisfied; he will be satisfied with the product of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit.

We keep coming back to this, our words. There is nothing in God’s Kingdom that is not hinged on our word and His. The super key is getting our words to align with His. That is why I think this series is so important. You are getting a focused look at what God has to say about health and healing. Let us not forget, though, that God has constantly spoken to us about the words of our mouth. When we get our words in alignment with His teaching on healing then we will have healing tongues.

Truly life and death are in the power of the tongue. Let’s recall Job 22: 28, from earlier in this series, “You will also decree a thing and it will be established.” This statement tells us clearly, I think, that what we say is what we get. I am not saying there are not other forces acting on us, but if God said life and death are in the power of the tongue, and He did, then there must be a great deal of significance to what we say. Today’s verse will not be the last time we see scripture on the importance of our words, but it is significant that God specifically tied our health, and literally life and death, to the fruit of our mouths. Is that fruit good, or rotten?

Let’s think about this a bit more broadly for a moment. In the first place, I would not have you speaking about your life, health, or body in any negative way, ever. Period. That is the first level of this. However, let me dive deeper today by suggesting that other negative language may be impacting your health. Have you ever wondered why God made gossiping a sin? I will tell you that He had in mind your health. Not only does gossip harm the person about whom the tattler tells, it also harms the hearer and the speaker. It’s kind of simple, really. You can’t have garbage in your mouth without it poisoning you.

What about hateful language, words of anger, etc. Do you think those words go out from us without having any impact on our internal and external atmosphere and the people around us? If you remember some of those cartoons that depict foul language coming from a person’s mouth, you will recall the ugly language usually being represented by a black cloud. In a sense, I believe that is the exact environment we create for our bodies when we use hateful, angry language. Remember that God wants us to be at peace and we will not be at peace when we allow ourselves to get into tirades of ugly expressions.

Think back on today’s verse. With the fruit of our mouths, we will be filled. In other words, we will eat the fruit of our mouths. Is that meal going to be something pleasant or something vile? What we eat certainly impacts our health. No doubt about that. The part we didn’t necessarily understand is that we should strive, not only, to eat clean food but to use clean words as well. This is important. In fact, it’s life!

Choose Life

Deuteronomy 30:19-20

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding close to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, so that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.

So far, along this journey, we have seen that part of the Father’s health practice is to lead us into good choices. Yesterday we saw the blessing and the curse. Now, the Father says, very plainly that is up to us to choose between the blessing and the curse. One leads to life, the other leads to death. He has given us the right to choose.

The right to choose is killing us. Yep, I said it. God loves and honors us so much that He has guarded our freewill zealously. This is good news though because God has laid life before us.  The problem is that we are not always good stewards of our freewill. What’s worse is that when we make bad choices, and things go awry some people are quick to blame God. He is making it very plain in this passage that He is giving us the choice. He called all of heaven and earth to bear witness that He has set before us life and death. Then, amusingly, He gives us this bit of advice. “Choose life,” He tells us. Wow! Clearly He was concerned that someone might not make the right choice unaided.

This passage comes right on the heels of the explanation of the blessing. The blessing is life just as Jesus is life. It is to the Old Testament what our inheritance in Jesus is in the New. I like to think of it as a double measure of the blessing working in my body and my life. You should expect good things to happen in your life because the blessing is working in you.

Let us remind ourselves, though. The blessing “shall come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the Lord your God.” Don’t think of this obedience as a harsh task master. In real life it becomes, listening to God and doing what He says. If He tells me something about my diet or exercise and I choose not to do it, then the blessing is going to be hampered in that area. He is not punishing me for disobedience. He has pointed out the way to reap blessing. It is all on me if I don’t do it.

There is the blessing in the land but there is also the curse. God lets you choose between them. You can follow Jesus to the promises like the Israelites followed Moses or you can choose to do your own thing. You can go back to Egypt for that matter, but remember, you cannot live in Egypt and enjoy the fruit of Canaan. So, choose, which shall it be, blessing or living in the land of the curse? Choose life. Follow Jesus so closely that he cannot get a moment alone. Have breakfast with him and call him to watch over you while you sleep. Ask him to speak to you in your dreams and chat with him throughout your day. Intertwining with him is the best way I know to choose life.

High Way

Romans 8: 2

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

The first phrase of the above sentence is just glorious good news. You have been set free. The Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of life, has set you free from all bondage by the power of love and life in Christ Jesus. Hallelujah! Whatever has bound you in the past no longer has power over you.

Taking the whole sentence together gives us another perspective. In Jesus we were set free from the law of sin and death. Do you see there are two paths here? The Holy Spirit, through Jesus, has set us free so that we can walk in the law of the Spirit of life rather than walking in the law of sin and death. So, there is a path of life and a path of sin and death. Formerly we were trapped on the path of sin and death. We had no choice, no escape. But then Jesus came and broke all the chains that bound us so that we could be free indeed.

Here is the point that we need to understand though. When Jesus broke all those chains that held us captive, we were no longer bound to the path of sin and death. We, however, no longer being slaves but rather free people in Christ have a choice. While Jesus paid the price of your ransom and set you free, He did not make your choice for you. That would only be another form of slavery. The scripture says that whomever the Son shall set free shall be free indeed (John 8: 36). In other words, Jesus did not trade your bondage for another form of slavery when He ransomed you. He didn’t buy you as a slave that is bartered and traded. He ransomed you out of the hands of the oppressor so that you can live as a truly free person with all the rights and responsibilities that inure thereto. Therein lies the rub. Where there is freedom and rights, there is responsibility.

Jesus didn’t redeem you so that you can run around in the darkness, a slave to the law of sin and death. Rather He shed His blood so that you would have the right to choose. He is not going to pick you up and put you on the path of life. He is not going to chain you to the correct road so that you don’t go wandering off like a lost sheep and fall back into the pit. He has purchased your complete freedom and is not going to take it away from you even if you make an absolute mess of your freedom.

You must choose. Are you going to walk on the path that is paved with the law of liberty in Christ Jesus, the path that love bought? Are you going to live the way of the path of life? Or are you going to keep dancing along the path of good intentions fallen short, the path of compromised ethics? Are you absently mindedly or even intentionally going to stay on the low path that leads ultimately to death and destruction? Look, you don’t walk the High Way without purpose and intent. You must make conscious decisions every day to come up higher. The road leading to life and liberty is one of choice and deep commitment. Your right to walk on it was guaranteed by Jesus but you must still choose to come up to the higher life. Little compromises along the way are going to create potholes in your road. Do not let inattention to the details of life damage your path. And do not forsake your values for convenience or benefit. Choose to walk on higher ground. It is the best and safest path.

Hidden and Revealed

Colossians 3: 1 – 4

Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

We talked about seeking on Monday. Here Paul tells us what else we should seek. So far this year, we have seen that we are to seek the Lord, His strength and His face continually (Psalm 105: 4), His Kingdom and His righteousness (Matthew 6: 33), and now the things which are above. The shorthand is, fix your eyes on Jesus. Keep looking at him because in him is all that matters. All the universe is in him because he is the light, the life and the way.

Seeking is a very important scriptural and spiritual concept and I wouldn’t minimize it in any fashion. Reading this passage, though, one surely is gripped by our death in Jesus, which brings us to the next thought. We need to be resurrection conscious. By this I mean that by now we should have died to ourselves, died with Christ and been raised up with him in a resurrected life. If, then, you have been raised up with Christ, don’t keep looking back at or longing for the old, dead man. Leave the things of the earth to the dirt they are born of and set your heart on the things above. Does that mean you cannot enjoy any of the good things on the earth? No, absolutely not. God has given us all good things to enjoy (1 Timothy 6: 17).

At some level this is about our values. I think of saints I have studied or known about and the over-arching similarity is their devotion to Christ. They buried the old self with its desires and arose with a new value system. It is just fine to enjoy a new car, a new house or a nice vacation. We know that God gives us those things to enjoy. Dying to self means those things no longer occupy the space they once did. In the resurrection life, God is the center of the universe. If our life is truly hidden in God with Christ, we will have made some choices about what is most important to us. These are choices made with the heart. The lover of God could not choose earthly desires over His longing for God because his heart compels him to seek the face of God. This is about loving God above all else. Some of those old saints I have read about would more likely forget to eat than to miss a single day spending time with God. They needed it, craved it.

We love God too but perhaps our zeal is not as vibrant as that of some of the people we read about. However, we can be as impassioned as anyone. We can have such zeal for God that nothing stands in our way when it comes to our devotionals. We too can have an unquenchable passion for the one who loved us first. I know I want more of that passion in my life. I am sure you do too. As we focus our attention on the thing we want, we draw ourselves towards it. Discipline helps too. The use of discipline helps us to develop a lifestyle that later becomes a part of us. As we discipline ourselves to do what we choose, we begin to enjoy the fruit of those disciplines so that we come to desire the thing we had to almost force ourselves to do previously.

Still, it begins with a decision born out of love for our Father. We choose to die to self and the passions of self and instead live to Christ. This is really some heady stuff, very idealistic and not too common. The modern church certainly is not known for its disciplined devotion to Christ. None the less, we are true believers with a love for Christ and we are finding our way into deeper and deeper ways with him. We are products of the past and the teachings of our time. We have journeyed through many aspects of knowledge and balance. I believe we are beginning to long for more of Jesus and Father. We need more of them in our lives, in our very breath and we are leaning forward into them where the life we live is a product of their lives; us in them, them in us. The great news is, they are leaning toward us too. They are calling for us to come into the deep water, water which is over our heads. As scary as that can be, it is a wonderful place to be. With Christ, hidden in God is our life, our old life having been buried.

Where is your heart? What do you want? Tell the Lord and ask him to lead you. This is a new level in Christ and a very safe place.

Death and Taxes

Acts 1: 2 – 3

[U]ntil the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive, after His suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

There was a period of forty days between when Jesus was resurrected and when He ascended to heaven when He made several appearances to his disciples. He had his body and was alive. He ate with them and they touched His body. This is the period of time when Thomas, whom we like to call doubting Thomas, pressed his finger into the wound in Jesus’ side. When Mary, who was the first to encounter the risen Jesus, pressed into Him, He told her not to “cling” to Him because He had not yet ascended to the Father.

It is interesting to note that there was this period of forty days when Jesus appeared to his disciples. He had arisen from the dead with his body but He had not yet ascended to heaven. He used this time to minister to his disciples and to teach and instruct them. I imagine that this was very special time to the disciples. From this we get an understanding of resurrection and that Jesus’ body did not just evaporate in that tomb but that it was raised up. We gain insight into our own day of resurrection and that we also will be alive just as Jesus is now alive. He is alive and this message was truly born in that forty-day period between the resurrection and Jesus’ ascension to His Father when the disciples saw Him, spoke with Him and touched Him. Their experiences with Him during that period strongly influence our message today. He is alive! And we will live with Him for all eternity and the power and glory of His victory. He is most assuredly alive. He lives. And it is for us that He lives. Truly this is a message worth shouting from the rooftops. Our Jesus defeated the bonds of death. He overcame a world of destruction and decay so that we all might live and not die. He conquered death and taxes, the two things that we think cannot be overcome. He had fish paying His tax for Him after all. When we get a real deep revelation of His victory over the things that seem impossibilities to us then we are going to gain our own freedom. We will be truly alive, then, in him.

Killer God

1 Kings 17: 18

So she said to Elijah, “What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance and to put my son to death!”

What is that expression, the more things change, the more they stay the same? This might well have been said yesterday rather than long ago. There are two implications in the verse. The first one is that God punishes us for our iniquity by making bad things happen to us. The second is that it is God who takes life from people.

God answered this widow’s prayer when she was at the end of her rope with nothing to feed herself or her child. Elijah showed up, sent by God, and blessed her flour bowl and jar of oil such that neither ever ran empty. She received supernatural provision from God through Elijah. However, when her son died she immediately turned on Elijah and God blaming them for her son’s sickness and subsequent death.

Isn’t that about how we are today? When someone dies we say, “Well, God took them home.” Other people are even worse. When something bad happens they not only blame God, but they say He is punishing them for their sins. Hello!! That is a person who understands nothing about the message of the cross. Jesus took your sin and God said He doesn’t even remember it anymore. So, how is God going to punish you for something He doesn’t remember and that Jesus already paid for?

Elijah took the woman’s son to the upper room and prayed to God for the boy’s life to return to him and the boy was restored. Now, unless God is schizophrenic, it makes no sense to suggest he killed the boy. If He wanted the boy dead, He wouldn’t have brought him back to life. Or is God just a puppet master who sits in heaven playing games with us. “Hey, watch what happens when I kill this widow’s son!” You can’t know God and believe something like that. He is love and further, He doesn’t play silly games with people’s lives.

We forget, I guess, that there is a devil in the world. John 10: 10 teaches that Satan’s aim is to steal, kill and destroy. The verse does not say that God comes to kill. In fact, Jesus was speaking and said that he came to bring us abundant life. That is kind of the opposite of kill, steal and destroy.

It is amazing how twisted around we get but that is why it is called deception. God is a life giver. Blessing comes from the Father. He doesn’t even need to bring you trials. There is already plenty of that in the world. Is there anyone you love? I mean really love. Is there someone you love more than you love yourself? Do you wish to be a blessing to them or do you want to make their life a hardship? What does love do? Trust your Father to be the source of blessing. He is goodness and mercy. He will restore what the devil steals from you just like he did for the widow of Zarephath.