Month: December 2015

A gospel-centered person is characterized less by the exemplification of certain personality traits and more by being united to the Person of Jesus. Our brief look at the Scriptures showed that God uses a variety of people from an assortment of backgrounds with differing skills and shortcomings to accomplish His work. He isn’t looking for a certain skill-set to employ; rather, He is looking for people who are united to the Son through His death and resurrection. Our gifting and skills are secondary to our union with Christ.
–Matt Chandler

More than your ability, God wants your availability.
Lay your “Yes” on the altar.
Give God a blank check and let Him fill in the blanks for your life.

These are just a few other ways I have heard the same idea. God wants total and complete surrender of you to Him. He wants you to declare like Isaiah: “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”

But too often, we are so focused on comfort and peace and security and self that we are unwilling to answer God’s calling for total surrender. Deny yourself. Die to yourself. Pick up your cross. Follow Me. These are the words that God uses to tell us to give every single thought over to Him, every single step over to Him, every single word over to Him, every single action over to Him.

Are you striving toward that?
Or have you become complacent in your spiritual growth, feeling that you have gone far enough with Jesus?

In 2016, I hope you will destroy all complacency in your life and become passionate about uniting with Christ in a way that radically transforms your thoughts, your speech, your attitude, and your actions.

Christmas is all about the Incarnation – the idea that God became a man.
Emmanuel… God with us!

When Jesus was in the boat on the water caught in a storm with His disciples, they cried out for Him to help them. They had no idea how powerful the One they were crying out to really was:

Jesus stood up and yelled into the wind and spray, “Quiet! Be still!” The disciples shrank back in terror. What kind of person could shout to the weather as if correcting an unruly child? The display of power in the midst of a storm helped convince the disciples that Jesus was unlike any other man. Yet it also hints at the depths of Incarnation. “God is vulnerable,” said the philosopher Jacques Maritain. Jesus had, after all, fallen asleep from sheer fatigue. Moreover, the Son of God was, but for this one instance of miracle, one of its victims: the creator of rain clouds was rained on, the maker of stars got hot and sweaty under the Palestine sun.
–Philip Yancey

The love exhibited through the Incarnation is hard to fathom, but the truth remains… God left the glory of Heaven to be born as an infant, to go through childhood and adolescence, to experience all the depths of humanity… so that He would be the proper sacrifice for humanity when He would later go to the cross.

Thank you God for the Incarnation.
Thank you God for Your great love.
Thank you God for Christmas!

How should you go about living today?
Live as though Christ died yesterday, rose from the grave today, and is coming back tomorrow.
–Theodore Epp

Jesus, help us to live in such a way that we are overwhelmed by Your sacrifice, overjoyed by Your resurrection, and overcome with delight at the very thought of You coming soon to bring us to Yourself!
May this be my heart’s cry today and every day from now until His return!

For years I had thought of the Sermon on the Mount as a blueprint for human behavior that no one could possibly follow. Reading it again, I found that Jesus gave these words not to cumber us, but to tell us what God is like. The character of God is the [subtext] of the Sermon on the Mount.

Why pray?
   If an earthly father gives his son bread or fish, how much more will the Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him.
–Philip Yancey

All of God’s commands reveal His character to us. Therefore, as you read the Bible, read it not only to find out how to live, but to realize more fully the character of the One who instructs you to imitate Him.

Another prayer from 500 years ago that is perfectly relevant for us to pray today:

O Lord my God, You are all my good. And who am I that I should dare to speak to You? I am Your poorest and meanest servant, a vile worm, much more poor and contemptible than I know or dare to say. Yet remember me, Lord, because I am nothing, I have nothing, and I can do nothing. You alone are good, just, and holy. You can do all things, You give all things, You fill all things…. Remember Your tender mercies and fill my heart with Your grace, You who will not allow Your works to be in vain. How can I bear this life of misery unless You comfort me with Your mercy and grace? Do not turn Your face from me. Do not delay Your visitation. Do not withdraw Your consolation, lest in Your sight my soul become as desert land. Teach me, Lord, to do Your will. Teach me to live worthily and humbly in Your sight, for You are my wisdom who knows me truly, and Who knew me even before the world was made and before I was born into it.
–Thomas à Kempis