2 Corinthians 11:29-30 7/25/2023*

“Who is weak, and I do not feel weak?  Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?  If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.“

After stating his compassion for those he leads; and admitting he is as flawed as anyone else is… Paul declares that his boasting will only be about his weakness… Don’t skip over that concept… It’s a radical statement, and a revolutionary way to live your life. 

How do you establish your self-worth? Do you set your value on your level of performance?... Are you treasured because of what you do and how well you do it? … or does your value emanate from whom you belong to?

If my confidence is in Christ –  am I so grounded in Him that I don’t need to defend my own public image? Am I so confident in the power of my Savior that I embrace the things that show my need of Him? This is a radical departure from most people’s PR plan, and Paul is not subtle about it. 

He doesn’t have a trophy room; he boasts in mementos of his weakness… He embraces it. Do you absorb the benefits from your trials? ...or do you miss some growth opportunities because of blame deflection, denial, or self-pity? 

Paul leans into his flaws and sufferings and squeezes every ounce of growth and wisdom from each trial. No dodging, no excuses… he simply leans on the power of his Savior and allows God’s redeeming grace to transform him. 

Our adversary prowls around looking for someone to destroy.  So, we are not only exposed to suffering… we are hunted. If they’re not here already, trials are coming.  When heartache arrives, what are you going to do about it?  … Hide? Run?

Paul meets his head on… because he knows it will be the Mighty Warrior God that responds.  Paul will lean into the suffering, embrace his own weakness,  and marvel at the apocalypse God unleashes on those who hurt His children. 

So, decide today to boast about your strength, or about God’s ….  Rely on one or the other, and then let the chips fall where they may. 

“We are too much haunted by ourselves, projecting the central shadow of self on everything around us. … Redemption is this, to forget self in God.”

- Frederick W. Robertson

Colossians 4:10 7/18/2023*

“My fellow prisoner Aristarchus sends you his greetings, as does Mark, the cousin of Barnabas. (You have received instructions about him; if he comes to you, welcome him.)” 

As Paul ends the letter to the Colossians, he mentions everyone but himself.  

Aristarchus is a prisoner with Paul, and Paul sends greetings from his “fellow prisoner” as if they are on a cruise ship  instead of in a prison cell. 

Had this been my letter, I would have been demanding my team to get busy targeting my unjust imprisonment.  Encouraging them to write letters, make phone calls. 

But Paul’s heartbeat is that other people are more important than he is… So, he speaks for Aristarchus and then he takes care to guard the reputation of a guy named Mark. This is the same Mark who had “quit the team” during a missionary journey. Which later caused a public dispute between Paul and Barnabas with Paul refusing to let Mark come on the next trip. 

As Paul sits in prison, he takes care to tell the Colossians (who may have heard of Paul and Mark’s disagreement) that Mark is an important part of the team and that their disagreement was not over what is – what isn’t sin …. but over personal approach to evangelism. 

This delineation is something we have abandoned. There are non-negotiables… right and wrong are not “soft targets”. Scriptural definition of sin is unbendable… opinions and techniques for effective evangelism are not ... 

Paul just said Mark was to be welcomed. I might have guarded my authority, and position by saying something like “now that he sees things my way,”…But Paul just says, “if he comes, you welcome him”.  

Their dispute was public, it had gone “viral”… but Paul is unconcerned with announcing a winner. Forgiveness’s goal is not to prove me right -and then virtuous for pardoning… That’s not forgiveness, that’s self-aggrandizement. 

Paul loved Mark. Later he will praise Mark as being helpful to his ministry. So, Paul didn’t worry about his own public stature, only about Mark’s reputation.

As I deal with others today can I keep my eye on the ball?  Can I love others without my own self-interests getting in the way? It all comes down to who I think is more important…you or me? 

“A culture of honor is celebrating who a person is without stumbling over who they’re not.”

— Bill Johnson

LUKE 10:29-30 7/11/2023*

“But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho…”

Most of us have heard the story of the good Samaritan.  What we sometimes miss is that Jesus told the story in response to a question… and He didn’t answer the question.  

Jesus was asked, “who is my neighbor”?... and He answered by describing how that man should be a neighbor to others. That clarification is important because it completely changes the message.  

The man talking to Jesus wanted to establish what people needed to do to qualify as his neighbor, but Jesus said – “you’re the one who needs to qualify. Having a neighbor is your job, not theirs”. 

That flips the script... I can no longer look for loopholes to disqualify you – instead, I must do things that qualify me to be your neighbor.

God made it clear that life is a team sport and that we are to consider others as more important than ourselves. That point was significant enough for Jesus to include when asked about the greatest commandment. 

God placed the need for community in our DNA. Psychological studies on solitary confinement have revealed that isolation "destroys people as human beings."  Being alone causes anxiety, panic attacks, depression, anger, paranoia, and psychosis. The medical term for that is “it ain’t good.” We were created to love God and others. 

In scripture, God warns us not to give up meeting together.  He instructs us to go to church… go to bible study,  encourage one another… meet other people’s needs and be a good neighbor.

So, as you go out today don’t look for someone to be a good friend to you… look for someone who needs you to be a good friend to them. Look for people, like the man on the road to Jericho, who need help.   Because the only things you really get to keep – are things that you give away.

Living next door doesn’t make you a neighbor… loving someone does… Look for people who need to be loved… and then do something about it. Being a neighbor has nothing to do with where my house is… and everything to do with where my heart is.

"Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one." - Nikolai Berdyaev

Habakkuk 1:2-3 7/4/2023*

“How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?… Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?”

Sometimes I act like Habakkuk. I forget that it is unwise to admonish God for allowing injustice and wrongdoing to persist - when I am the perpetrator of injustice and wrongdoing myself. It’s called a double standard. 

It happens when I don’t see my sin as clearly as I see yours.  I tolerate your sin as long as it looks like mine, and doesn’t go outside of my “acceptable sin circle” … The problem with that is that there is no such thing as an “acceptable sin circle”.   

The wages of all sin is death. But instead of confession and repentance, we adjust the definition of sin, and call for tolerance and acceptance. But God has never tolerated nor accepted sin … 

God sees sin as the mechanism that murdered His precious Son and His reaction to any sin is exactly what you would expect it to be… It is impossible to overstate His loathing and intolerance of sinfulness.   

An honest reading of scripture clearly defines sin, and we must see it as God does.  We cannot lower the bar …Yet at the same time, we must acknowledge that none of us can clear it.  

God hates sin – yet loves sinners. 

So, we must love the lost without supporting or tolerating their sin. 

And we must hate sin - without despising those who are controlled by it. Missing the mark in either direction causes us to sin ourselves. 

The litmus test is simple: If you confess and in faith battle sin in your life, you are on the side of Christ … If you redefine and embrace sin, you are not. 

All men are in one of these two camps. There are no degrees of righteousness… you are either holy, or vile.  And we all start out as vile. Only a blood-stained faith, with a repentant heart, can move me to holiness.

Scripture is clear that I am saved by grace, through faith alone, but the question remains …do I hate all sin like God does? … or do I tolerate my sin …and only hate yours?

“It is not the absence of sin but the grieving over it which distinguishes the child of God from empty professors” ― A.W. Pink

Joshua 2:11 6/27/2023*

“When we heard these reports, our hearts melted and no courage remained in anyone any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth below.”

Rahab was a prostitute who made this statement to the spies that Joshua had sent to check out Jericho. She risked her life to save them, and this verse explains why she did it.  

She had become a believer… she didn’t have a name for it, but she heard of the power of The Lord and proclaimed that God was God.  She believed in her heart, confessed with her mouth, and acted on her conviction. Her faith led her to hide the spies and misdirect the soldiers who came looking for them… She put her own life on the line to protect God’s people.

How does this young prostitute’s faith stack up to yours and mine?

My faith is more scripturally based, my theology more informed, but do my actions compare to hers? Do I declare my faith in God and then back up that statement with fearless action? Or is my faith an “add-on” to my life that I discuss when convenient and safe, but avoid when it involves risks?

How convicting it is to realize that after half a century of studying scripture, and personally seeing God’s hand at work in my life…  my faith is not as robust, as this young woman’s who had only heard of God’s power second hand. 

We have no excuse for being less courageous than Rahab. She has set the bar and there is no debate that God intends us to dangerously live out His word not just talk about it.  He expects us to be strong and courageous… not quiet and comfortable. 

What keeps our mouths shut in this culture?... Only one thing… fear… and according to scripture, Fear does not come from God. 

I believe Rahab’s faith was counted as righteousness and that she changed her life after God showed her mercy. This would make her the first recorded Gentile convert.  Some may debate that, but there’s evidence to support that belief. 

The reason God recorded her story though is less debatable… It was to illustrate that faith produces courageous action, and to challenge us to boldly live out the gospel we preach.

“Faith can move mountains - fear can create them.” - Anonymous 

Revelation 1:8 6/20/23*

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

The earth has spun off its axis and we live in frightening times, but this verse anchors our faith. God is the “Alpha and the Omega”. He is now… always has been… and always will be the King. And that should influence the way I react to “crises”.

God is different than us. The moment we arrive on this planet a countdown begins. We are allotted a predetermined number of minutes, and everything we do is influenced by the temporariness of our existence. Ironically, we spend much of our time in desperate attempts to get just one minute more. 

But God is immune to the taskmaster we refer to as time… There are no clocks in Heaven.  There is no pressure, no rush, no lateness… no anxiety about squandering time, because in Eternity there is no such thing. The Great I AM is always in the past, present, and future tense. 

Today, I pray that the future will be peaceful, but I rest in the fact that God has seen our tomorrows, and that the Bible has already recorded our triumphant final outcome.

No one is pacing the floor in Heaven. God is not anxious about America, or China, or Russia, or viruses, or AI, or anything else. God controls it all. So, I either need to trust Him, or I need to panic… but it is irrational to do both as they are mutually exclusive… so I need to choose.

In Revelation God tells the church at Laodicea that their lukewarmness nauseates Him. Their indifferent attitude, and superficial approach toward God make Him sick… I don’t want to do that.  I want to trust God so thoroughly that nothing disturbs my composure. I want to concentrate on what He has assigned me to accomplish today, and then tomorrow get up and do it again. That should be the pattern until one day my work is completed, and I go home. 

If I will just trust Him, God will produce a peaceful confidence that will transform my life… If I remember that the Navigator of my life is in complete control, I can sit back and enjoy the ride. 

“Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.” - Leif Enger

Isaiah 47: 8,10 6/13/23*

“Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure, lounging in your security”… “Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you….” 

These verses address the delusion of self-security and the distraction of pursuing pleasure… We desire to be self-sustainable, but we weren’t created to be alone; we were designed to have unbroken fellowship with our Heavenly Father, and nothing created will take the place of the Creator.  

When our soul is empty because fellowship with God is lacking, we tend to “self-medicate” in pursuit of pleasure. It may be drugs, alcohol, reckless behavior, or something as subtle as  the dopamine hit you get from ordering unneeded things online.  Whatever your go-to “medication” is, there is great danger in trying to fill the God shaped hole in your heart with anything other than God.  And the threat in our affluent society is that there is always another trinket available to try to fill that hole. 

We chase pleasure and security as a distraction from the voice that is yelling in our head that we are unfulfilled … It is dangerous to pursue wealth and finite objects to give you safety and purpose… because if you attain them, they will only disappoint… and you will never be in more danger than when you believe you are “lounging in your own security”. 

Our problem is that FedEx can’t deliver what we need. It can only deliver things that dull the pain we feel from lack of purpose.  Real meaning is not found in things. It is found in walking with God.  The only security that we can count on is being redeemed by the blood of Christ and filled with His Holy Spirit. And the goal of the enemy is to distract us from that fact. 

We must intentionally resist pursuing worldly pleasure and building our security on anything other than the loving mercy of God. 

2nd Timothy chapter 3 says there will be people in the end times who will be “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power.  Have nothing to do with such people.”

Not only must I have nothing to do with falsely religious people who speak of God but pursue the world  … I must be sure I am not one of them. 

“Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

Daniel 1:8-13 6/6/23*

“But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s choice food or with the wine which he drank; so he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself.”

Daniel “made up his mind”- and that was the game changer.  

What he believed dictated what he did. His obedience wasn’t a test run to see if it was beneficial – he decided to completely follow God.  There is a difference between those two positions.  

As a coach, it’s easy to differentiate between athletes who make up their mind to commit to improvement … and those negotiating their effort based on risk and reward. In your peer group, it is not hard to distinguish between men who are committed to pursuing Jesus, and those who are just keeping God around in case they need Him.  Daniel “had made up his mind” to chase what matters. Total obedience was his Plan “A” … and there was no Plan “B”.

What is your Plan? When people look at you do they see a hearer of the Word, or a doer?  Do you just talk a good game … or are you someone who has made up their mind not to be defiled? 

Daniel’s faith made men want to learn more about his convictions … The guard who allowed Daniel to deviate from the king’s diet, risked as much as Daniel did… Daniel’s faith led this man to more than a dietary adjustment.  It prompted him to consider God, even at his own peril. 

Interestingly, Daniel doesn’t accomplish this by belligerently demanding compliance to his beliefs, he respectfully negotiates the opportunity for God to show His power… trusting God for the outcome. 

There is a lesson there for me. I don’t have to win the argument; I just have to win the opportunity to show what God has done in my life, and that opportunity is seldom won by words alone. 

I must make up my mind not to defile myself, to “walk what I talk”, so that my life can be a light in the darkness that leads others to God… It may be hard at times, but it is not complicated…I just have to make up my mind to do what He says.

“In the end, our worship is more about what we do than what we say.”

Louie Giglio

Jonah 1:2 & 3:2 5/30/2023*

Jonah 1:2  “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

Jonah 3:2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

The first verses of chapter 1 and 3 in the book of Jonah repeat the same instructions…  Why?... What happened in chapter 2?  We get a hint about what took place in verse 2:1:  “From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord...”

Jonah finds himself in trouble because he runs from God. The instructions God issues in chapters 1 and 3 are the same – but Jonah has changed.  His rebellion caused events which taught him that ignoring God is dangerous and futile. 

History would have viewed Jonah differently had he just obeyed God in the first place. He would have been remembered as a powerful prophet had he not been stubborn and self-centered.  But chapter 2 occurs because “Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish”… This decision led to Jonah reluctantly becoming the world’s first Ichthyologists to study the inside of a living fish while it swam in the ocean.  

How could Jonah think he could choose a better path than God?… Probably the same way I do when I rebel against the Lord’s plans for me. And like Jonah, I resist turning back to Him until I  find myself in danger. Why does life have to go completely off the rails before we pray?… Why do we run away until we find ourselves in the belly of a fish and have no other option but to cry out to God?  

We must learn from Jonah’s story. We can’t just focus on the Love of God to the exclusion of His power and authority. He is our loving Father, and He is also the Omnipotent Ruler of the universe and must be obeyed.  Maybe by meditating on Jonah we can acquire a clearer view of God and eliminate the “chapter 2’s” in our lives. The chapters where we choose our own plan over His. If we can reduce our tendency to run from God, it will decrease the number of times we find ourselves lying on a deserted beach in fish vomit. 

“Running from the presence of God has the futility of "trying to shovel smoke with a rake". - Paul David Tripp”

1 Peter 5:8-10 5/23/2023*

“…the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you…”

Two powerful truths this morning:  

First, the devil is a predator stalking the herd.  Don’t casually read that. It carries a stark warning. Life is a team sport, and we need each other.  

Lions won’t stalk, a healthy animal in the midst of the herd. They look for a weak one that has wandered away by itself. Arrogance, which says, “I don’t need other people,” will make you a target. 

You need community and you won’t find it by accident.  We have never been lonelier than we are today… Though constantly on our devices with a mob of superficial “friends”… without transparency, we are alone in the crowd.

Go to church. Get connected. Find committed brothers you can be honest with, and who will be honest with you. Seek friends with a biblical world view that you can be transparent with, and who will have your back when the enemy is prowling around in your life. 

The second take away from this passage, is that Self-pity is not an effective life strategy…. faith is. We have been trained to be victims but that’s not scriptural.  We’re never alone in our suffering, and we should not be surprised when a world that crucified our King, is not enamored with His servants. 

We will face battles, but the war has already been won.  Christians everywhere participate in the sufferings of Christ. It is part of living in a broken world, but it’s not a permanent condition. Our eternal destiny is to be more than conquerors. 

Don’t be bewildered at the fiery trials of life, and don’t face them alone … Stand in your faith with a loyal group of authentic friends. Face the fight with courage. And trust that nothing impacts you that has not first passed through the hands of God . He loves you.  He redeemed you, and in the end, He Himself will restore you. 

“A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.” 

- Michel de Montaigne