How Do I Know You?

On September 2, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

John 17: 3

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

You know, when I read this recently it gave me pause. We have a lot of ideas about what eternal life means. I think, though, that some of our ideas are more cultural or religious than they are scriptural. What I mean by that is that we have created a picture of eternal life as sitting around heaven or on a cloud somewhere. Jesus comes along and disrupts our thinking. Eternal life, he tells us, is not about what we do after we leave here. Eternal life in knowing God and knowing Jesus. So, the question we must ask ourselves is, “Do we know God, do we know Jesus?”

This perspective could change our evangelical approach too. Our goal no longer would be to get someone to say “the sinners’ prayer” so that they can punch their ticket to heaven and eternal life. Now our aim must be to introduce them to the person of Jesus and to lead them into knowing both he and the father. This approach would seem to mean that leading them into a relationship with the father and son is the key step. That means that discipleship takes on a new role as well as a first prayer. We must from the beginning teach that the key to eternal life is not a one-time prayer. It is the pursuit of the father and the son. We should teach that having accepted Jesus as one’s lord is the mere beginning. A life lived with Jesus and with the Father in close communion is what the father intended when He sent Jesus to earth. This is not burdensome. This is the delight of Christianity. It is an invitation to enter into a personal relationship with the creator of all.

This is pretty serious stuff. Saying the sinners’ prayer and then sitting on a pew for the rest of one’s life is not going to gain eternal life for any of us. Knowing Yahweh, the only true God and His son Jesus is the only path to attaining eternal life. That revelation may even shake up a few of us. Whom do we know that professes their Christianity, shrouds themselves with the religious trappings but in truth knows neither the father nor son? It is time for us to shake things up and encourage people to move forward in their relationship with the trinity. Otherwise, there may be a great multitude left behind.

Back to Top

He is Coming

On August 7, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Isaiah 40: 3

A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness.”

John the Baptist was the one prophesied that would be the voice of one crying out in the wilderness to make ready the way of the Lord. This Old Testament passage foretold the coming Messiah and his herald. Now the coming of Jesus is history too. And yet, the old has become new again. Jesus is coming back and there is a voice crying out, make yourself ready for his return is imminent. That cry is from the Holy Spirit telling us to make ready the way of the Lord. There are many people who do not know of the greatness and the love of the Holy One. They are hungry and searching but they search after every kind of lost doctrine out there. They become the blind leading the blind and they will all fall in a ditch. Only the true voice of the Holy Spirit can lead them into truth, which is the son of God. Let us each find our voice and also pray that the Father will anoint people to go into the world carrying salvation and the grace of the Lord with them. We must all pray if we are going to accomplish great things for the Lord. Who shall we send? Jesus is coming. He has salvation in his hand. All of us have a part in spreading this message. The time is at hand. Make clear the way of the Lord in this land.

Back to Top

Eternal Life Secret

On July 15, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

John 3: 36

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

I’ve said it before – Christianity is more than the one time utterance of a salvation prayer. When Jesus went to the cross he had in mind the building of a family. He delivered himself up so that every person could be restored to the family of the Father. What Jesus did for us was very personal and as such, it was meant to bring us individually and collectively into a that very personal experience.

Yahweh is very proud of his son and all that he accomplished. He has raised him to the highest of all pinnacles. He is the first of all children and our lord and high priest. It is important, therefore, that we obey his word, not only to honor him but also because he is leading us into the light and to victory.

We call Jesus Lord and that should imply that we do what he says. First, though, we must know what his words, teachings and commands are. We can know this through our Bible and Bible teaching ministries. To say that we are under his lordship and yet we do not do what he says is to lie to ourselves. He who does not obey the Son will not inherit eternal life because Jesus is the way and he is showing us the way.

Second, we’ve got to learn to listen to his voice speaking in our spirits. How do we do that? How, if you’ve never heard God speak before, do you begin to hear and recognize his voice. Fortunately, there is an easy way and my friends at www.cwgministries.org will show you. 

Eternal life is in the Son. We must hearken to him and to his words. It is not enough to say that we are Christians. That isn’t the secret password to get through the gates. The secret is no secret at all – it is adherence, yes, obedience, to the Lord Jesus. Hear what he has to say, read his word and follow.

Back to Top

No Longer Sinners

On July 14, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

1 John 3: 6

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. 

Christians make a big deal about sin. It is kind of interesting really that people who have been redeemed from sin would be so sin conscious. But look, Jesus has solved the sin problem forever so let’s get sin off of our minds and focus on that indwelling victory within us. We are saints, not sinners.

You may hear people confessing that they are “an old sinner saved by grace.” Well, which is it? Are you a sinner or saved by grace. Surely, today’s verse will change our confession. We know what these folks mean though, don’t we? They are trying to give Jesus a nod for what he has done for us so it usually is well intentioned. However, I want to get those words out of your mouth because you are now a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5: 17). You have been reborn. The old person has died and behold you are new. Hallelujah. We need to focus on what Jesus did for us in that miracle transformation instead of always looking back at the dirty garments he took from us. Those are grave clothes and they are supposed to be in the grave with the old self. 

Are we perfect? Well, yes. When we are abiding in him and following his leading, we are with the perfect and we are perfect. But then the old man resurrects and we do something stupid or we just simply make mistakes. No problem. Jesus took care of that so we just run to him as fast as our little spirits will carry us and trade our error for his flawlessness. We run to the altar in our minds and cast our “self” on the altar and put on Jesus.

Am I minimizing sin? By no means! I am casting it into the pit of hell where it belongs. My purpose in this devotional is to get sin off our minds and out of our mouths. We should be focused on Jesus and his righteousness. I want to change your self-image. 1 John 3: 9 says, “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” This is where we live. We don’t practice sin. We abide in the Holy One of God and we cannot sin. Just keep abiding. Get out of yourself and into Jesus. Let his abiding presence be louder than your former sin. Lose your sin consciousness and revel in the saving grace which abides in you. This simple paradigm shift will lead you to praise and you will be lifted up rather than down trodden.

Look, here is the bottom line, sinners aren’t getting into heaven so you better decide you are a saint. No sinner abides in Christ and Christ most certainly does not abide in a sinner. Put on your reformation in Christ. Let your eyes be fixed on Jesus and the wonder of his majesty instead of focusing constantly on yourself and your shortcomings. In other words, get yourself off your mind. Jesus is our heart, soul and has become our very existence. You are truth and righteousness in the Lord, Jesus, our Messiah.

Back to Top

The Welcome Mat

On April 27, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Ezekiel 33: 11

“Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live.’”

God isn’t into punishment. He is into salvation. He desires that none should perish. That is why He sent His Son, so that every person may be saved. 

We get skewed ideas of God sometimes, that He is full of hate and contempt. Nothing could be further from the truth. He is love but there are a lot of people in the world who cannot perceive of love nor accept love so they remake God in their image rather than accepting Him as He is. Because they are unlovely, unworthy to be loved, they make God a hateful, unloving God.

Another problem is that God gets the blame when things go wrong. Satan has done an amazing job of camouflaging himself. He has become almost invisible and intentionally so. There are many people who do not recognize his existence any longer. One person told me that she does not believe in the existence of evil. Look around! How can one truly not understand that there are evil actors in the world? Furthermore, some folks get really nervous when you talk, or even teach, about the devil. This has helped him to run around stealing, killing and destroying with impunity. It is even worse than that. Not only does he get away with it, all too often God gets the blame. Satan scores twice with one swipe. And it is not only the unsaved, the uninitiated who criticize God for Satan’s evil deeds, we Christians are guilty of it too. I ought to know. I blamed God for my sports injuries and troubles. I was helped along by Christians who told me that God was doing these things to me in order to make me strong. What a horrible and wrong teaching. God uses love to strengthen you. He doesn’t blow out your knees in order to make your faith and trust in Him stronger. It only takes a small exercise of logic to figure that one out. 

Another common mistake is to judge Christianity by Christians. We are still flawed and make mistakes all of the time. It isn’t very logical when you think about it to judge God by the behavior of people but it is a pretty natural thing to do. Any human institution is going to suffer from the growing pains of its members but God is perfect and so is His love. We certainly are ambassadors for the kingdom of God whether or not we wish to be. A true seeker, though, should exercise wisdom and seek the face of God. I will promise you this. You will not see the face of God and walk away from Him. When a person seeks God they find love and acceptance. When they look at us they sometimes find judgment and condemnation. That is not God’s way. While we are learning to walk and act like God, the wise person will look to Him rather than to judge Him by what they see in us. Actually, if one really thought about it, the fact that the Father loves us enough to accept us should speak volumes about His love. The unsaved ought to look at Christians and say, “If God can love and accept them, then He will most certainly love me.” And it is true. There is no person on this earth that He does not love and wish to spend eternity with. Think of the most vile person you know. God’s will, His heart’s desire, is to save that person and give him a home in heaven.

Back to Top

God Remembers

On September 16, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 98: 3                NIV

He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

God has not forgotten His first love; the house of Israel. He is faithful to Israel even today. Israel was the seed that was supposed to germinate and spread the love of God throughout the earth so that all would know of the coming of the Messiah. Perhaps Israel didn’t fulfill the entirety of its commission but the Lord’s faithfulness endures. It was not dependent on the faithfulness of men but rather on the love of God. And God’s love has expanded to the ends of the earth so that it fills every nation and every people even if those people do not acknowledge the love and faithfulness of God. 

This verse has a present tense and a prophetic tense about it. It declares that the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of God already. That is because God has filled the earth with life, truth and love. Even the ground and plants have been saturated with God’s faith and love. This has been so since the beginning. If God’s faithfulness and love were absent then there would be no life and scientists find life in the most remote places, even places where it was once thought that no life could exist. Life is the product of the love of God. Where there is love, there is life and vice versa.

The prophetic sense of this passage looked forward to the first coming of Christ and even the second coming. Salvation is extended to all who will receive. There is no person on earth that is precluded from the love of God and the resultant salvation. Even where no preacher has gone and preached, there is the knowledge of God. He has put into the heart of every person the knowledge of Himself. He has catalogued the mountains and streams as a testament to His presence. The world around us testifies to His existence even where no person has carried the gospel. His faithfulness has ordained the coming of the Christ to bring salvation to the world and His love is reaching to the ends of the earth. And where no minister of the gospel has gone before God is laying a foundation right now so that no one will perish without having heard the Word of the Lord.  

God is not trying to keep people out of heaven. He is endeavoring to get them into heaven. He is faithful to the small and large and to the ends of the earth. Salvation has come. The saving grace of the Lord is and has filled the earth. We may openly partake of salvation from everything which seeks to hinder us. God’s salvation saves completely. He is faithful in the small things and the large things. Let salvation touch your household today and then by the grace invested in you by the Holy Spirit of God, extend that grace to all without reservation.

Back to Top

Show Me the Way

On July 1, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 51: 10 – 12

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Thy presence, and do not take thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit.

Although David lived before the Messiah came and claimed victory, he is in so many ways a New Testament person. When you read his writings you see that he not only had a revelation of the Holy Spirit but that he also had a relationship with him. In today’s passage you see the essence of the New Testament regenerate child of God and the process of renewal.

God cleaned us by the sacrifice of Jesus. We were literally washed clean of all of our transgressions. He recreated us into the glorious version of ourselves that we were ordained into at the beginning of time. The footnote for “clean heart” says “upright heart”. Our hearts have been made upright before God. We are upright, or righteous, before God because of the cleansing of our hearts wrought by Jesus. But salvation did not end there as you can so plainly see from this text.

God, next, renewed our spirits. Imagine the joy our spirits experienced when the rejuvenating power of the Holy Spirit came into us and renewed our own spirits. Our spirits are cast in the same image of the Holy Spirit and we are truly part of him. David says renew my spirit in that image so that I am steadfast, unwavering and strong. We, like David, can stand surely and steadfastly in the grace and honor of our Lord knowing who we are because our spirits have been renewed in Christ Jesus. 

And then David makes this oh so interesting comment, “Do not take thy Holy Spirit from me.” David knew what it meant to live with the Holy Spirit of God. That was a very uncommon occurrence before Jesus came. David also knew that the Holy Spirit and his walk with him accounted for the great successes he enjoyed as well as the blessings. The Holy Spirit protected him under some very difficult circumstances and David had a revelation of how to walk daily with him. This statement reflects the next step of our regenerated life. We are renewed in Christ and move into close personal fellowship with all three persons of the trinity. Our cleaned hearts are now fit habitation for the Holy Spirit so we can invite him to come live within us and be our daily guide and teacher. It does require an invitation of course. The Holy Spirit is a good house guest. He will come if asked but would never invite himself.

One can almost hear the insistent, almost desperate tone, in David’s voice when he says, “Do not take thy Holy Spirit from me.” He knew that the Holy Spirit’s presence in his life was saving grace and he realized how much he needed that presence in order to live. David was immensely successful in many ways but he also lived in very dangerous times. One of his sons usurped the throne at one time and David’s life was again in peril as it so often was during his lifetime. So David understood that all of his riches and his throne were because of the power of the Holy Spirit but he also knew that his very life was sustained through the power of God’s Spirit. Without that grace guarding his life he would not have survived to old age. Therefore, when David recognizes the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life and prays to the Lord for that presence to remain ever with him we can understand that his prayer is one of deep sincerity, appreciation and understanding. In fact, David shows an understanding of life with the Holy Spirit that few New Testament believers demonstrate even though this indwelling of the Holy Spirit is part of our inheritance through Jesus and part of our salvation package, part of the regeneration and renewal of our lives.

Salvation is a big thing. It is a process by which we are continually growing into the Father. Every day we can participate in this renewal by Christ and importantly we can celebrate these great gifts from the Father by acknowledging them through prayer and in thanksgiving. In Jesus we truly can experience the joy of salvation.

Back to Top