Month: December 2015

Jesus says, “If you’re not greater than your master, and he has been willing to do this disgusting thing, you must also be willing. If you are my ambassadors, called to represent my will and way, called to be tools of my redeeming grace, then you must not think that any ministry task is beneath you. You must be willing to do the lowest, most debased thing so that my work and my will be done. You must not refuse. You must not think of yourself as too good. You must be willing to be the lowest of slaves in order that my kingdom may come and my will may be done. You must be willing to do whatever is necessary to position yourself as a tool of redeeming grace. You must not be too proud. You must not be unwilling.” Let’s be honest… we are tempted to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.
–Paul David Tripp

May we be willing to be doormats for others, so that as they wipe their boots on us, we will not only serve them, but they will be cleaned up and better because of us and so that they will have the smallest idea of what it means to stand on the foundation of Jesus.

Our prayers are important to God. But how should we pray?
In just four succinct sentences, this quote tells us so very much about how we are to pray:

Praying in His Name means “presenting all I AM.” All of the character of Jesus Christ is set forth in His Name. This means all of the character of God. What we ask, then, should be in keeping with what He is like, and a request unlike Him cannot be granted to us.
–Rosalind Rinker

May your prayers today be in line with what He is like.

The Word Compassion. It is a word of Conviction for me. And that is why this quote is important. It is funny how 550-year-old words can step so hard on my toes!

If you cannot make yourself what you would wish to be, how can you bend others to your will? We want them to be perfect, yet we do not correct our own faults. We wish them to be severely corrected, yet we will not correct ourselves. Their great liberty displeases us, yet we would not be denied what we ask. We would have them bound by laws, yet we will allow ourselves to be restrained in nothing. Hence, it is clear how seldom we think of others as we do of ourselves.
–Thomas à Kempis

The second greatest commandment in all of God’s Word: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Much more easily said than done.

God help me to love others as I love myself.
Help me to consider the needs of others above my own.
Help me to have the compassion and love of Jesus.

If I found I had driven into a bog, I should know I had missed the road. But this knowledge would not be of much comfort if I then had to stand helpless watching the car sink and vanish; the damage would be done, and that would be that. Is it the same when a Christian wakes up to the fact that he has missed God’s guidance and taken the wrong way? Is the damage irrevocable? Must he now be put off course for life? Thank God, no. Our God is a God who not merely restores, but takes up our mistakes and follies into His plan for us and brings good out of them.
–J. I. Packer

Plenty of times I’ve missed the road.
Plenty of times I’ve had to “watch the car” sink into the bog.
I’m so glad that such terrible mistakes, though impossible for me to fix, were still redeemable by God.

He can and does and has and will again take my biggest mistakes and allow them to help me better understand Him, His love, and His redemption.

I may still have to suffer through consequences of my mistakes, but He will walk with me as I go through them, and on the other side I will be able to testify to His goodness and the new path and plan He has placed me on.

The Christian faith has always insisted that the flaw in human nature is more basic than any fault in man’s political or social institutions.
–Bruce Shelley

Sorry to burst your bubble if you were not aware… but we are not basically good.

Now it is certainly possible that when we compare ourselves to someone else who acts “worse” than we do, then we might “feel” like we are pretty good.

But if every thought that we had each day were broadcast to everyone around us, we would be mortified, embarrassed, and totally ashamed. Our inner sinful thoughts definitely teach us that we are not “good at heart” no matter how much we want to convince ourselves.

The Bible tells us that our righteousness is as filth to God because all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Though He created the first two humans in goodness, He also gave them a choice, and they chose to rebel against Him and damaged the perfection. We now find that we are all born with a propensity for sin.

Therefore the quote above rings true. Though there are problems in each society and culture, and though we keep trying to fix these problems, our complaints about the political and social institutions often are focused in the wrong place, because these institutions are not the root issue. The root issue is that human nature is bent toward sin. And until that main problem is fixed, many other sub-problems will show up.

But if that is the case, then the problem seems too big. How do you change the entire human race? Fortunately, God has an answer for us: One person at a time. Your role is not to change the entire human race, but your task is to take the good news gospel message of Jesus who can come in and fix the root problem in each person’s life and you are to share that message with another person. And if you will be faithful to do that, you will begin to see the root problem eradicated in one person at a time, which will change the people around you – your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your co-workers. And as you encourage your entire local church family to do the same, then the neighborhood where your church family meets will change, and the community will change, and society will change.

But it all must begin with us banishing the idea that people are pretty much “good at heart” and understanding that all people are sinners in need of transformation. Only when we recognize this truth will we be ready to do something about the root problem. Again:
    The Christian faith has always insisted that the flaw in human nature is more basic than any fault in man’s political or social institutions.
–Bruce Shelley