Do You Love Me?

On December 3, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

John 21: 17

“Simon, son of John Do you love Me? Tend My sheep.”

I have pondered for several years now what it means to be a Christian? We come in so many varieties and place our values on different things. Where is the commonality that makes each of us Christian? Are we simply behaviorists, each with our own list of what a Christian “should do?” If so, which of us has the right list? Truly, most will recognize that we can easily produce a long list of Christian behaviors that we think every “true” Christian will perform. And yet, even as we produce our list out of our heart bubbles the cautionary declaration that we are professing law rather than a covenant of grace.

I have heard people refer to others as not true Christians or not really a Christian even though the person of whom they speak has said the saving prayer and attends church. What are they saying then? I think they are saying there is something about that person’s behavior that makes one doubt that their heart has been touched by the power of Jesus. Perhaps the speaker believes there is a lack of transformation (Romans 12: 2). So apparently some people think that having once said a prayer of salvation is not sufficient for actually being saved and wearing the coveted mantle of “Christian.” These people would, again, seem to be behaviorists. They believe that our Christianity should be recognizable through our behaviors. In this way of thinking transformation is key. We must be remade in the image of Christ. That would make us true Christians.

I do not disagree that we should be transformed. Reading the Epistles of Paul clearly leads us to that conclusion. The problem with this position is two–fold. First, the test of our Christianity is still completely external. Paul talked about our being transformed but we must be transformed on the inside. In other words, Christianity is not something that happens on the outside of us, it happens on the inside and transforms us from inside out. Second, as long as we are judging behaviors we will always have the problem of whose list of do’s and don’ts is correct.

As I pondered this question the Lord revealed the answer to me and it is profound in its simplicity. That which makes us Christian is that we love the Father and Jesus whom He sent. The marker which identifies us as Christian is not the salvation prayer or anything else which may be seen with the physical eye. True Christians are marked in their heart. Theirs is a heart which loves God. David wrote “Search me, O God, and know my heart” (Psalm 139: 23). As this epiphany unfolded before me I said, “Okay Father, you can search my heart and see if I truly love you.” But still unsatisfied I asked another question. “How, Father, shall I know that I really love you?” Can I search my own heart? Can I believe what I think I see there? Perhaps I am only projecting what I want to see. How can I test this transformation to determine if it is real?

His answer was so short, sweet and so profound. “Tend my sheep.” Wow! The foundation of Christianity turns out to be simple. A Christian is one who loves God and the Christ whom He sent. We know that we love God not by a goo-goo feeling within us but with a love for His sheep. I don’t deny that feeling of love for God but Dad says that is not the way to know that our love for Him is real. The way we will know that we have truly been transformed in our hearts is that we love His kids. The transformation of our hearts will surely been seen on the outside but this is the manifestation form that it should take, that we love God’s kids and bless them. So it is not that I go on a mission trip that is important. That again is the behaviorist view not taking into account the condition and motivation of my heart. I may go on the mission trip because I believe it is the thing to do, I may believe that “good” Christians do missions. I may choose a mission trip out of a works mentality. All of this is rot and putrefaction to God. When, however, my heart longs to go somewhere to aid others out of love for them then I may see that yes, transformation is affecting the place where God lives, my heart.

This transformation of our heart should affect us every day. If I go on three mission trips this year but am not kind and generous to my friends and family I might wonder if this is a true transformation or only a façade. Have I become a giver by nature or am I still tight fisted? Are my thoughts continually on me and the things I want or has my heart learned to think about what I can do or give to another. The measure of my transformation, the foundation of Christianity is my tending of the sheep. 

Romans 12: 2 says that through our personal transformation we may “prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” It is love which leads us. So in the end the proof of whether or not I am a true Christian turns out to be pretty simple. Am I tending God’s sheep?

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Enemies of Love

On December 2, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 139: 20

For they speak against Thee wickedly, and Thine enemies take Thy name in vain.

This verse strikes me as outlandish. David is talking with God and says that people speak wickedly against God and that His enemies profane His name. Well, let’s start with speaking against God. We know it is true that people speak against God but honestly, doesn’t that just sound insane? I mean, think about it for a moment, why would anyone do that and what would they say. Then it struck me. Even Christians say horrific things about God. They talk about God making them sick and beating them up. They develop all kinds of theories that sound pretty spiritual but in the end is a bunch of bunk. They speak wickedly against God. And you know what; it makes me kinda crabby to hear it, probably because I used to do the same thing. I thought God was the one that caused my knee injuries and the good Christians I was around at the time said that it would make me stronger. Well, it made me strong alright; so strong and so stone like that there was very little tenderness left. In fact, I was so strong and so fortified that I couldn’t even hear or feel God. Perhaps, it wasn’t God afterall. Why would He do something that would ultimately separate me from Him? Is He stupid? I don’t think so.

And then there is the part where David talks about God’s enemies. Really, God has enemies? Who in their right mind wants to be an enemy of God? You see, the problem here is that we just don’t understand God in the least. God is love. He doesn’t just love people; He is love. You are made up of flesh and bone and He is made of love. So how in the world can anyone be an enemy of love? Okay, that is ridiculous. People get all philosophical about God and reason out all of these wonderful ideas but in the end they end up sounding like idiots because at the base of it all they are speaking against love and it takes an idiot to speak against love. The truth is that they are afraid. They are afraid that some kind of responsibility will fall on them if they acknowledge their father. They may have to start being nice to folks or extending some generosity. Oh heaven, He might ask them to become givers and bless some other people. It is just a fear based philosophy and anything that has its root in fear is corrupt and corrosive. 

I want to be a friend of God and I want people to know that He is nice. Maybe if we talk nice about God people will get a revelation. Perhaps if we demystify God and help people understand that He is here with us and available for a one on one relationship they will see Him as more than a vain philosophy and connect with love. We can pray that love will fill them and minister life and joy to them. I think that would make the world a much nicer place for all people.

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The Power to Change

On October 21, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   1 Comment

Romans 12: 2

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

I was driving today when this verse popped in my mind. The thought that came with it was that we are not to transform ourselves but rather to allow ourselves to be transformed. Look at this verse from the Good News Bible: “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God—what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect.” You see, we are not in charge of changing ourselves. We can’t. We haven’t the power to change but God can transform us into the beautiful image of us that He sees when He looks at us. 

Did you know that when God looks at you He sees the butterfly rather than the caterpillar? He sees you beautiful, glorious and when we spend time with Him His perception of us begins to rub off on us. Jesus is truth and God, our Father, has sent truth into the world to free us from every bondage, even the one of having to change ourselves into something worthy of love or of acceptance. You are already perfect. Jesus made you so. Okay, so sometimes the old man inhibits the full expression of that perfect creation within us but that outward expression does not change truth.

I tried for years and years to change myself and I was never successful but then the hand of Jesus touched me and through his love and acceptance I began to manifest the new person that he created within me. Okay, sure, I am far from the perfect expression of his love inside of me but if you knew the old me you would see the miracle of his grace at work. 

We can have the very best intentions and us the force of our will but the truth is that we just do not have the power to change ourselves. Without Jesus I can do no thing but with him all things are possible. That is why this verse does not tell us to transform ourselves or to change but rather to “be transformed.” This is the state of being rather than doing. In other words, allow yourself to be changed which is done through the renewing of your mind. Renew your mind with God’s thoughts, with His wisdom and that will transform you. Allow Him to shine the light of His love on you and you will change. God’s love, His truth are the forces which created the earth and everything in it. So, when we allow that love and the truth to touch our hearts and minds we, then, are just naturally and comfortably transformed into the lovely person we were created to be. It is a matter of allowing Him to be God, allowing Him to minister His love and acceptance to you.

The hard part of this is that you have to open your heart and allow God in. You also have to give your mind the food of renewal. What is that? It is the Word of God. The Word has transformative power in it because it is truth. The easy part is that God does all of the transformative work and it is painless because His transformation tool is love. When you really discover that you are not damaged goods, then you will no longer fear God seeing the real you. You won’t feel the need to hide anymore. He knows you better than you know yourself and He loves you. He even knows the person inside of you that you have not allowed to manifest yet. 

Won’t you let Jesus touch your heart and allow God to minister His great love to you? If you will open your heart and mind you will find that you never again need worry about changing. His touch will bring out the beautiful you that everyone else knows is in there. Allow yourself to “be” transformed. Renew your mind and allow love to have its perfect work.

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Grace, Love and Fellowship

On October 20, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

2 Corinthians 13: 14

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

This is Paul’s closing in his second letter to the Corinthians. He is sending his best wishes, hopes and prayers to them just as many of us do in the closings of our letters. The best that Paul can come up with is what he includes in his prayer for them. I find it interesting which gift he associates with each part of God. Paul would have known each part of God intimately and would have been very aware of the gifts of each of them. He would have known what flows from each of them and by and through this we can know what personifies each of them and what we can expect from each of them. 

God is love. We’ve heard it over and over again but so many times we fail to really appreciate that love is God’s substance; his very nature. He is made up; constructed of love and it overflows him. He has love in abundance to give each of us.

Grace flows from Jesus. His sacrifice has bathed us in grace. His grace covers us. His pardoning grace has saved us and made the way for us to bask in the love of the Father.

What of the Holy Spirit? What can we expect of him? We can expect to fellowship with him. We can hang out with him, talk with him, receive instruction and inspiration from him. Paul would not have prayed that the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with the church at Corinth unless it was attainable. We are living in a new age. We are living in the age of the Holy Spirit. He is here for us in ways that were not possible in any previous age. Because of the love of God and the sacrifice of Jesus, the Holy Spirit has been sent to us to make his abode with us. He has come to lead us, guide us, and teach us.

May the grace of the Lord, the love of the Father and the intimate presence of the Spirit of God fill your day and your life.

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What Love Requires

On September 12, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

1 Chronicles 9: 1

So all Israel was enrolled by genealogies; and behold, they are written in the Book of the Kings of Israel. And Judah was carried away into exile to Babylon for their unfaithfulness.

People struggle over what they perceive as an angry God of the Old Testament. Admittedly, there is a different tone to some of the passages in the Old Testament but still, we know that God always loved His people. God is love and we know that God does not change (Malachi 3:6). So, if we know that God is love and that He has never changed then we must conclude that He was always a God of love. How, then, do we reconcile some of the harder passages of the Old Testament?

First, people did not understand about the devil in the old days. They thought there was only God. Besides the dialogue in Job there are only a few other mentions of Satan in the Old Testament. It is not until the New Testament that we really learn about the devil and his minions. Therefore, Old Testament writers did not know who to characterize as the source of their trouble. They wrote from what they knew and so they blamed God for their troubles. Read Job’s account for a clear example of this dynamic. So, one of the ways that we can reconcile the Old Testament accounts and a God who is love is from a New Testament perspective which recognizes Satan as the thief, killer, and destroyer. We now know who the enemy is.

Something else has been stirring in my spirit lately in regards to God’s love for us and the Old Testament. Every time recently that I have read anything about the Babylonian captivity a thought has surfaced. Why did a God of love allow His chosen people to go into captivity to pagans? I think the answer is because love required it. The people were out of control. They had given themselves over to pagan religions and such moral turpitude that they were destroying themselves. God needed a way to save them from themselves. They were on course to wipe themselves off of the face of the earth and from memory. So, allowing them to go Babylon, even though as captives might have been the way that God preserved the nation of His people. They were safer in Babylon than on their own. They were like children. If left to their own devices they would have destroyed themselves and their progeny. God hid them away and put them under an administrator who could and would control their erratic behaviors.  

Lastly, many times the source of evil tidings is the seed we have sown. When you look at the Old Testament you see, as you see today, that many times people are simply reaping what they have sown. God put a system of inviolable laws in place when He created the earth. Gravity is a good example. Another is that a seed always produces after its own kind. You can’t plant eggplant and reap cucumbers. It just is never going to happen. When the people sowed disobedience and violence those seeds just had to produce ill fortune. This is a principle of the laws of the earth. So, the enemy of the Old Testament sometimes was the people themselves.  

In conclusion, perhaps we can see the God of love through the captivity. Maybe the only way God could save His people was to allow someone else to moderate their behaviors. Otherwise, their seed would have continued to grow and would have eventually choked the life out of them. If you begin with the understanding that our Father is a God of love, then many things begin to make sense that were otherwise puzzling. Everything He does is out of love for us.

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Who is it?

On August 28, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Job 9: 24

If it is not he, then who is it?

You know the story of Job and of how great his suffering was. Job was a godly man so when calamity struck his house he was bewildered. The book of Job records conversations he had with his “friends”. In today’s passage Job is answering Bildad. He makes the assertion that so many Christians make which is essentially that God is the source of our trouble and misfortune.  

I was guilty of this myself. In my early years I, like everyone, suffered some hardships. My religious training had not taught me that there was a source of evil in the world. I remember saying to someone who was a Christian, “It must be God who is causing these bad things to happen to me.” It was a horrible thing to say to a believer but do you know what? He didn’t correct me. He didn’t explain to me how wrong I was and about the goodness and love of our God. Surely he believed in John 3: 16, who doesn’t? How, then, do we reconcile this God of love who gave everything to save us with the ideology of a God who inflicts pain and suffering? We cannot because the two are irreconcilable.

The devil has done quite a number on the church. He has reduced his image to that of a cute Halloween costume. He has shifted our understanding of him to fantasy and make believe. However, we have the means to learn and know the truth. James 1: 5 is the pronouncement of a major theme of the Bible, that being that the Lord, our God, gives us wisdom. The wisdom of God reveals all truth, so, the devil cannot hide in his lies when wisdom has come upon the scene. He is always exposed for the liar that he is.

When bad things happen, we need to understand that the devil is our enemy (1 Peter 5: 8). However, we can take comfort in knowing that our Lord has already defeated the enemy which means that we are no longer subject to the devil. We can overcome all of his machinations through the victory of Jesus. The first step, however, is in not being deceived that there is no devil or that our benevolent Father is the source of the bad things that happen in life. Believe me, when I thought that God was the source of trouble in my life I could not receive relief. It is only in our Father that we can triumph. 1 Corinthians 13: 8 says that love never fails. Well, here is an example of that non-failing force. Love always wins so we take the love of God, which is God’s very substance, and we apply it to the problem and love wins every time.

Your Father loves you more than you can imagine and He would never inflict harm on you. He only wants good for you and since He is love and goodness that is all that He has to give you. Give the devil his proper due and put him back under your feet where he belongs.

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Whom Do You Love

On August 21, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

John 21: 15

So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?

That was a loaded question. If you have ever heard a teaching on this passage which delves into the Greek words for “love” you know that Peter was really up against the wall because Jesus was talking about a deeper kind of love than Peter was yet able to fathom. I would like for us to look at this passage today in a similar way to the Greek word study but in a way that I think makes Jesus’ meaning even more clear. (By the way, the easy way to see what was going on in the Greek is to read this passage in the Amplified Bible.)  

Let us take today’s verse and overlay it onto 1 Corinthians 13: 4 – 8a. When we do so we find Jesus asking Peter a series of questions. First let us read the passage from 1 Corinthians. “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises. It isn’t arrogant. It isn’t rude. It doesn’t think about itself. It isn’t irritable. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs. It isn’t happy when injustice is done, but it is happy with the truth. Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up. Love never comes to an end” (God’s Word Translation). In many versions the last sentence reads, Love never fails. Well, you get the point but if you really want a revelation, read this passage in the Amplified translation. Actually, read it in a lot of translations. You will be enlightened. Anyway, when you read 1 Corinthians 13 together with John 21: 15 you find Jesus asking Peter (and each of us), Peter, do you love me – will you be patient with me? Peter, are you kind to me? Are you jealous? Do you brag? Are you arrogant and self-centered? Are you ever rude to me? Peter, are you thinking of yourself or of me? Are you irritable with me? Do you keep a record of past wrongs? Are you happy with unrighteousness; happy in the truth? Will you always be patient with me, believe in me, never give up, never fail and never stop hoping? That is what Jesus was asking when he said, “Peter do you love me?” 

Now think of it this way. Jesus has said to you, “I love you.” When Jesus says he loves you he speaks in the fullness of the concept of love. That means that he is conveying to you all of those things found in 1 Corinthians 13. There is great richness and depth in Jesus’ love for you. This is the way the Father loves you also. They love you with their whole being for love is not a shallow word in Christ.

Think of this also the next time you tell a person that you love them. Do you mean to convey all that is found in 1 Corinthians 13? If not, then you don’t really love that person. It may be a deep form of “like” but it isn’t love if you cannot put their needs in front of your own applying all of the characteristics of love. You see, 1 Corinthians 13 defines love for us. In our society we can sometimes use the word love very casually but now that we see what it truly means we may want to curb our tongues. Don’t misunderstand me though. I am all for telling people that you love them. I just want you to mean what you say and understand what love is. If we are not patient and kind to people then we have to conclude that we really do not love them with what God calls love. We may need them, want them, etc. but we have not reached that place in our hearts where we can love as Jesus commanded. When this is the case we must look within ourselves and ask why we, like Peter, have such difficulty expressing true love.

Peter was at the infancy of his ministry when Jesus asked him this question and it really was a question that was intended to prepare Peter for ministry. As we continue to follow Peter’s life and ministry we see that he did get a revelation of what Jesus began teaching him with that simple question. Peter grew and changed and became a great disciple of Christ and a great bearer of the commission and commandment of Jesus. Jesus only gave us one commandment and that command is to love one another (John 13: 34). Our commission is to spread love. It sounds so 1960’s but it is the truth and the essence of Christian life and evangelism. Go into all the world and tell them the good news (Mark 16: 15). What is the good news? That God loves them and that Jesus has restored them to that non-failing, endless love.

So, I want to ask you this question. Who do you love? Do you love Jesus? Does your love for God stand up to the test? Are we putting our needs and wants before God? It is a tough test, to be sure, but looking inside our hearts for the answers will help us to grow as people and as Christians. Live, love and grow.

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