The King has taken the throne

Now that good Friday and Easter are over 

what did it all mean?

Paul, the apostle, describes it this way,

"I pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. 

This is the same mighty power 

that raised Christ from the dead 

and seated him in the place of honor 

at God’s right hand 

in the heavenly realms. 

Now he is far above

 any ruler 

or authority 

or power 

or leader 

or anything else—

not only in this world 

but also in the world to come...forever! 

God has put all things 

under the authority of Christ 

and has made him head 

over all things..."  

-Ephesians 1

Do you realize what this passage means?  It means that Christ is king of EVERYTHING!  Right now, at this very moment, he's fully in charge of everything!! 

You don't have to worry about the next president, about terrorists, the economy or anything else.  

All that's important for us is that we acknowledge the king.  When we do that, really do that, we lay our fears, our worries, our pains and so much more at his feet and surrender to his rule over everything, even his rule over US!

Paul describes a day in Philippians when everyone, literally everyone who has ever lived, will acknowledge Christ as king....in fact, here's a few who will bow before him-  Hitler, Stalin, Caesar, Washington, Putin, Mohammad, ISIS soldiers, Hindu worshippers, atheists, agnostics, Mormons, 

literally everyone!  

 Paul describes it in this way,

"God elevated him to the place of highest honor

    and gave him the name above all other names,

that at the name of Jesus 

every knee should bow,

  in heaven 

and on earth 

and under the earth,

and every tongue declare 

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

    to the glory of God the Father."

-Philippians 2

We just celebrated good Friday and Easter, the empty cross and the empty tomb.  

The apparent defeat of Christ on the cross, and the ultimate victory of Christ from the tomb, 

but these verses tell us more about what happened when Jesus ascended to his Father...

they tell us, after paying for sin on planet earth, 

he became King of everything.  

And today, at this very moment, he's still king...even if you don't like it, he's still king.

And one day, we each will bow before him and acknowledge he is the king!

The entire gospel is about this one thing- 

the kingdom has come 

and God is inviting men and women 

to come and be part of it.  

The king has taken the throne!  

Jesus Christ is that king,
the king of everything!

Is he your king?

Eternity has begun

 He is risen! 

That's the great declaration of the church.

In the reality of that event 

eternity has begun for billions.

An eternity rich with promise  

hope

joy

life

And so much more.

A new kind of eternity has begun
 because Christ has risen!

How glorious, how wonderful.   

Are you part of it?

Have you trusted him?

He, this Jesus, is Lord of heaven and earth

And the soon coming King!

The death of hope

It was Sabbath.  The disciples were in shock.  All they had lived for, all they expected was over.  Jesus was dead.  

There's nothing written about this day in the Bible, but we can imagine that the day was full of grief, loss and fear.  They were experiencing the death of hope.  The death of all they dreamed.

Between loss and the work of God is always a sense of hopelessness.  Between death and what God will do next he left them with a day of nothing.  I imagine they were silent, unable to verbalize their feeling or disbelief.

There were tears.  Shock. Mental paralysis...what do we do now?

Between the death of hope and the resurrection of God's new work we each experience a time of grief, a time when hope dies...but wait, just wait.

Soon, in the midst of loss, you will see the resurrection of your hope in what God is doing.  And it will be more glorious than you imagined.

On this day they couldn't imagine what the next day would bring and in that resurrection all death of hope vaporized and a joy unimagined came.  

Like Job this day was sackcloth and ashes for the disciples, but just wait...in 24 hours they will forget all of this and be amazed at the work of their wonderful God.

And so will you.

Good Friday, Awesome God

He didn't have to do it

He could have avoided the pain

He could have given up on us

He didn't have to do it

But he chose to die

He chose to obey the Father

He willingly gave his life

He didn't have to do it

But he did!

What made this decision 

to do such a hard thing so easy?

Love

For God, the awesome and amazing God,

loved us so much

that he gave his only Son

to die on a cruel cross

for a fallen race, enemies of God at best,

so that he might buy us back from

death

hell

the devil

and sin

Love was at work

when all we see on Good Friday

is 

anger

hatred

rage

and death

It was the love

of God

that made this day

possible!

What's so good about Good Friday?

In this terrible day

we see the extent of God's love

that he would give his one and only Son

to redeem us.

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." 1 John 4

Looking for God

I go to church to worship the living God 

with other saints and sinners seeking him too. 

I don't go to be entertained 

I go to meet God

to bow before him 

to be still in his presence 

to hear his word 

to say "YES!" to his commands. 

It's not a consumer issue for me 

I'm not looking for the best preacher 

or the best music. 

I'm looking for God!

My God, My God....

It's Easter week.  Good Friday is near.  At this time of year in the Christian calendar we celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ.  But I fear we misunderstand one of the most important truths of the cross.

As Jesus neared the end of his sacrifice on the cross he cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"  Many in the Christian church have taught that in that moment God turned his back on Jesus and in his agony Jesus is verbalizing that sense of total abandonment and rejection,  but that can't be true! 

At that moment God the father was more pleased with his son than we could possibly imagine.  In that  moment Jesus had fully obeyed the father and accomplished redemption. In that moment I'm sure the father is smiling at the son, not turning away.

But why did Jesus cry out these words?  Why did he declare an apparent sense of forsakenness?  It's because we don't understand what Jesus was doing.  He didn't say these words in despair or agony, he said them as a sign post pointing us to Psalm 22! He's telling his disciples and us, "look at Psalm 22, you will see all this prophesied by David hundreds of years ago."  This is something rabbis often did to point their disciples to a certain passage of scripture.

In the moment of the father's greatest approval of the son we see rejection, but we miss the point of what the Savior was doing.  He was showing us he fulfilled all that the father had given him to do.  He had fully obeyed, fully pleased his father.  How can we see the great work of redemption as displeasing to God?  How have we gotten this so wrong?

In the moment of greatest defeat in the world's eyes God accomplishes his greatest victory!  How wonderful God loved us so much that he gave his son for the salvation of the world!

Quote of the day

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.

And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.

And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."

-Mother Teresa, 1994

Dealing with ME

 

My biggest problem is not my work, other people around me or even the struggles I face. My biggest problem is ME! I live in a world of people all struggling, for the most part, with themselves. It’s all these struggling people clashing together that creates the problems we see around us.

Unless I can deal with the me I see in the mirror I can never work through my issues with you. Paul the apostle knew this struggle himself, we all understand the struggle, but he actually articulated his own battle. Here are a few of his thoughts,

“I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?”

My biggest problem is ME! I hate that. I want to please God, I want to be who he designed me to be. I want to live as he designed me, but something keeps pulling me down to the base person I was when I first met him. That “me” that causes all my problems, all my anger, my sinful thoughts, my frustrations, irritations, my resentments. All the things that come from that “me”…..is not the me God wants me to be. He has created in me a new man, and yet I so easily fall back to that old man. It’s so frustrating. I hate it! I so understand Paul’s words and struggles. So do you, don’t you? We all live with this tug of sin pulling at our hearts, minds and affections, but it’s not the end of the story. There is a solution that Paul mentions at the end of his thoughts in this passage. Here’s his conclusion,

“Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.”

The truth is that my sinful nature will never improve. I have to deal with that and “walk in the Spirit,” the new man God created when I trusted him. My old man, the old me, always wants its way…that won’t change…it’s my reality. It’s yours too. My challenge is to choose to walk in his Spirit and not as the “me” who wants his way. Today I’m struggling with me. Frustrated by the man in my mirror, but I know God has provided a better way.

My next step today is to walk in that new way and thank God for his forgiveness and grace.

This struggle will be ours until we finish this life. It’s part of the curse, but the hope we have is the Spirit of God in us that gives us the opportunity to live in a new “me” that pleases God. I remember the story of a young man asking his grandfather when the passions of life ebb. The old saint paused for a moment and then, with 85 years of wisdom, responded, “I don’t know, but if they ever do I’ll let you know.”

Dealing with “me” is my struggle for the day. Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.

The smell of smoke

Have you ever sat by a campfire and found, that even hours later, the smell of smoke had permeated your clothes?  It lingers, it clings and others can smell it too.

Often, as I live in a world that reminds me of Sodom and Gomorrah, I'm aware that the smell of the culture has clung to me, that I've sat by their campfires too long.

I know, having experienced it, that by simply walking by a campfire the smoke of it easily and quickly permeates your clothing and the smell goes with you.  Some of that is unavoidable as we live in a world walking away from God, but it's not the aroma I want others to smell in my life.

Paul writes of another aroma, another smell that permeates a Christian, that's what I long to smell like,

 "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing,  to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life." 2 Corinthians 2 

I live in a world that smells of smoke, the smoke of rebellion against God, but in the midst of that aroma God has given us a new fragrance, the smell of Christ, the aroma of life.

Lord, help me to live in the world, but not smell like it.  Let me smell like you, having walked by the fires of your Spirit burning in the lives of others, and may that aroma linger with me, the smell of Christ, and might it be a sweet aroma that draws men to you.

The ugly twins

The man who doesn't fear the Lord will fear everything else. 

We have come to a day when we live in the midst of ugly twins, twins that always walk together.  It happens when men turn away from God, when they reject him and want their own way.

These twins come, like the horses of the apocalypse, when we abandon God and no longer live in fear of him.

Solomon wrote, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge."  But when we no longer fear God it doesn't mean fear is no longer part of our lives.  In fact just the opposite happens...fear of everything else grows!

And when fear permeates a culture it's ugly twin shows up- anger.  When all of life is up to me, when I no longer trust in a sovereign, a king to help me, then fear invades my life.  When life seems out of control anger rises. Anger erupts as I respond to the fear that overwhelms me.

I've wondered how long it would take for the ugly twin, anger, to show up and now he has come to join his brother, fear.  

Once more, Solomon comes to the rescue as he wrote, "The fear of the Lord leads to life, So that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil."  But in the absence of a healthy fear of God comes another kind of fear.

"The fear of man brings a snare." Prov. 29:25. 

In the absence of a fear of God the flesh responds to the fears around us and strikes out....it's the ugly twin we are seeing today...anger.  And when anger is given full vent it looks like this,

"...outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these."  Gal. 5

When the ugly twins show up their cousin, anarchy, follows close behind.

All of this is being lived out in the evening news as we watch the twins acting out around us.  

So how do we respond?  How do we deal with the temptation to invite fear to dinner?  

The only response for a believer it to trust God.  It's a Godly fear that will vanquish the twins and give us peace.  We dare not enable the twins to act out in our lives.  Our only response can be the one the apostle Paul invites us to,

"Therefore, having these promises, beloved, 

let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." 

2 Corinthians 7:1

Doubt

Have you ever doubted your faith?  

Have you ever wondered if all of this is true or just a grand fantasy?  

If you are really honest doubt is part of your journey, part of the odyssey to faith.

As I read this passage from Matthew this morning I was once more amazed to read that men who had been with Jesus for more than three years, who had seen miracles...eyes opened, lepers healed, dead men raised, Jesus walking on water and so much more...now find themselves doubting.

Can this all really be true?  Is it a grand fantasy or is it real?

I love the honesty of the Bible that God would tell us about these first doubters....that even they wondered "is this really true?"

How do we answer these doubts?  If you haven't had them, you will.  If you have children they will go through them.  Anyone coming to God through Christ will struggle with doubt.  Some of it is honest inquiry, some of it is the enemy challenging your faith and some is our attempt to work through our own faith issues.

Doubt, it's a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction, a question.....and it's real.  Now what?

When it comes go to God, be honest, test his word, test your questions.  Investigate the history of your faith.  God will never be offended at your questions.  He welcomes them, he knows they are there and this faith of ours can stand the test of evidence.

Doubting?  That's great, now investigate, see if this is true or not.  You will find your faith stronger for the experience.  

God is bigger than your doubts.

Divine encounters

"For we are God's handiwork, 

created in Christ Jesus to do good works, 

which God prepared in advance for us to do."  

-Ephesians 2:10

She seemed lost as she stood in the middle of the mall parking lot.  

We had not planned to go to this mall to walk around, but on a whim it was our destination.  We walked the mall, looked at the stores and then headed back to the car.  That's when my wife, Joye, saw her.  She asked, "Are you ok?  Are you lost?"  Her name is Ariane and she couldn't find her car.  It was clear she was panicking a bit.  

We offered to help her find the car.  She was grateful for the help, got into our car with us and we began the quest to find her car.  We began where we were, driving down each aisle of the parking area.  No car.

Then we went to the next lot, looking for her car.  She was just here visiting she said.  It was a friend's car and clearly she was lost.  Then the next lot, no car.  One lot at a time we circled the mall looking for her car as she pushed the remote to unlock the doors hoping to find this lost car.

"You don't think it was stolen." she asked.  We reassured her it probably was not taken. And then on to the next lot.

She was visiting, so we asked where she was from.  "Israel" she replied.  Oh, my how wonderful for us!  We would have helped anyone, but to help one of Abraham's children, what a blessing.  She told us the town she was from (near Tel Aviv) but we did not know the name.  We told her how thankful we were that the Lord had let us help her.

And then another lot, and she asked, "there's more?"  Around the mall we ventured, row by row, looking for a gray minivan.  DO YOU HOW HARD IT IS TO FIND A GRAY MINIVAN IN TEXAS?  They are everywhere, but we needed the one that responded to her remote.

And then finally, we turned a row and the lights went off on a gray minivan on the opposite side of the mall from where we found Ariane.  Elation!  We had done it.  You could tell she was relieved, we were thrilled to have helped her.  What a blessing for us.

She got out of our car, Joye followed her, gave her a hug and said goodbye.

This was one of those good works God had prepared for us to do.  What a blessing to get to serve our God in such a wonderful way.  We prayed for Ariane after we left.  We can't wait to see what God does in her life.

Closing thoughts- If we had not been watching, not been aware of those around us, looking at others as part of God's plan, we could have missed this wonderful encounter.  I wonder, as we go through our days, how many times we walk right past another Ariane and miss the joy of being part of God's work.

Wherever you go...

"But this comfort of finding yourself, 

by the order of Providence, 

in the situation in which you are, 

is an inexhaustible consolation."  

-Francois Fenelon

"I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.  I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.  I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."  

-Paul,  Philippians 4

"Wherever you go, there you are." -Buckaroo Banzai

From Paul to Francois in France and finally Buckaroo in movie and fiction there is one thing that we must not lose- wherever we go, in whatever situation we find ourselves, we are there by the hand of God and in his hands he holds us.  In that place of much or nothing we must not lose sight of the fact that this has come from God's hand and is a rich blessing from him.

Stuff

One of my greatest enemies is stuff.

The desire for stuff.

The need for stuff.

Having a place to put my stuff.

Knowing what stuff to take when we go somewhere.

Stuff like clothes, computers, phones, cameras, video games, extra shoes, e-readers, books, and a thousand other things.

Our house is full of stuff. 

We have no more room for stuff.

And yet, every day in every media we are told....

...YOU NEED MORE STUFF!

I'm tired of all the stuff.  I wish I could get rid of it all and just have the bare necessities...the things we really need.  A simple life is so appealing right now.  Having all this stuff, paying for all this stuff, finding places for the stuff is overwhelming.

But tomorrow new stuff will be available, stuff I don't know I need yet...and once more the desires are kindled. The ads will tell me that I really need this, I must have that, my life won't be complete without this new stuff.

And so we get more stuff, and when we run out of room we sell our old stuff in a "garage sale" to make room for the new stuff.

Doesn't this all sound crazy?

I know the "Jones" have all the nice stuff, but I'm willing to let them keep it.  More power to them.  We are on a quest for nothing but Christ alone....a quest to know him and live simply.  

Now for the challenge of getting rid of all the stuff.  

Anyone want some?  

We have a bunch!

  

It's a marathon!

Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

This morning I watched a video of a young man I know running a 3200 meter race.  His family filmed it and put it on Facebook.  The race was run on a 440 track so they had to circle the track multiple times to finish the 3200 meters.

At the finish line of each lap I wondered, "is this the end?"  They all looked tired, but they kept going!  Once more they came to the finish and kept going.  And again.  I was getting tired just watching the video as it seemed they circled this track 20 times. Finally, the finish, and my  young friend won the race.

If he hadn't trained multiple miles, if he hadn't prepared for months he could have never finished this race.  It demanded preparation, training and an eye on the prize....the finish line.

They crossed the finish line multiple times. I'm sure my young friend thought, "soon, this will be over, soon I will cross the finish line one last time and the race will be over."

The Christian life, the life of following Christ, is much like my friends marathon.  It takes training, persistence and an eye on the  finish.  If you aren't looking ahead to the finish you could never keep going.  You would never have the endurance to keep going.  

Like my friend, my walk with God is a marathon towards a goal- the prize waiting for me at the finish line.  The challenge for me, as I grow older, is to lay aside those hinderences that hold me back and continue the race, keeping my eyes on the finish.  Because you see, I won't cross my finish line until I finish this life.

Oh to finish well, to cross the finish line with hands raised in celebration of a race well run, with eyes on Jesus who ran this race and won his event.  May I imitate him as I run my marathon.