Category: Christian Living

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Christian Living

Back in the Saddle Again

saddle
Photo Credit: U.S.G.S. Museum

Two weeks ago my posts mysteriously disappeared once again. The reason… I had headed off to Mexico for a mission trip and didn’t have an easy way to post while I was there. (I’ll share some of the trip with you in the near future.) And then last week was “catch-up” week on all the things that had piled up on my desk. But now that I’ve almost caught up, I’ll get back to posting! Time to get back in the saddle!

It is said that in the late 1700s, a German prince traveled through France and visited one of the prisons. To show his respect to this important visitor, the commander over the prison invited the prince to select any single prisoner to be set free. In order to make the best decision, the prince spoke to one prisoner after another, asking each one why he was condemned to this prison and punishment.

What he found was that one after another told him of the injustice, oppression, and false accusations that had caused him to be placed here. In fact, from their accounts, they were all injured and ill-treated persons who were wrongly convicted.

At last he came to one who, when asked the same question, answered: “Your Highness, I have no reason to complain. I have been a very wicked, desperate man. I deserve even worse punishment than this and to be broken alive on the torture rack. I consider myself to have received a great mercy by being here.”

The prince looked hard at this man, smiled, and said: “You wicked man! It is a pity you should be placed among so many honest men. By your own confession, you are bad enough to corrupt them all; therefore you shall not stay with them another day.” Then, turning to the prison commander he said, “This is the man, sir, whom I wish to be released.”

Interestingly enough, we find ourselves in the same situation. We are desperately wicked people who deserve severe punishment. But the moment we are willing to admit our sins to Jesus, we find liberty.

The Word of God indicates that if we say that we have no sin, we make God out to be a liar, but if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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Christian Living

Reach for the Stars and All of Your Dreams Will Come True

Reach for the Stars! Attain All of Your Dreams!
a shooting star symbolizing the saying reach for the stars

We hear these types of things, especially at the end of May during graduation ceremonies and other milestone markers in life. As a youth minister, I heard these “motivational” speeches given to students time and time again.

These statements sound good initially, but the more I think about them…
If you reach for the stars and were finally able to catch one… even a tiny one… it would burn your hand clean off!

And some of my dreams have been nightmares. I don’t want some of those dreams becoming reality – certainly not that dream of me sitting in a final exam in just my underwear nor the one where a monster in the woods is hunting me down to gobble me up.

Of course, we use these little clichés to try to motivate us to make a plan and achieve it. But what if it’s the wrong plan? What if I set my ladder of success up, but once I get to the top of the ladder, I find out that I leaned it against the wrong building?

My plan is to have a safe, comfortable life. But is that goal the same dream that God has for planned for me? I’m not sure that a safe, comfortable life is what God has called me to.

Another one of my plans is to have a happy, healthy family and to put them first. But God says He is supposed to be have priority over my family. When I put my family first, I can allow my desire for comfort and safety in my family to keep me from serving God and from doing what I should. When I do that, I am making my family the supreme love of my life. I am worshipping them, looking after them and their welfare first instead of worshipping and putting God first. When I put my family first, I am allowing my family to become my idol.

“Christ calls us to a higher mission than to find comfort and tranquility in this life. Love of family IS a law of God, but even this love can be self-serving and used as an excuse not to serve God or do his work” (Life Application Bible Notes).

As a youth minister, I would tell my students – to follow your school counselor’s plans for your life is wrong; To follow your friends’ plans for your life is wrong; Even to follow your parent’s plans for your life is wrong. (Sorry parents… but it is true.) These different people can definitely share much wisdom with you, but when God is calling us to His plan, we must leave all other plans behind… no matter whose it is. Our school counselor’s plan, our friends’ plan, our parents’ plan, even our own plan for our own life must be abandoned when these plans are not in-line with God’s plan.

God’s plan is that we not waste our lives on a safe, comfortable life of leisure, but rather that we boldly and courageously live for sharing His message with the world – and that will be uncomfortable in many ways and will even be unsafe in certain situations.

What plans do I need to abandon this week and leave behind so I can start following God’s plan?
How about you?

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Christian Living

Jesus Wants You To Own Nothing

A photo of sunlight breaking through the clouds symbolizing God and His desire for us to own nothing and to turn everything over to Him
My last post was about the fact that Jesus is worth everything. And I used an illustration from R.A. Torrey to help show how Abraham had learned this truth. Today, I want to share with you the rest of what Torrey said about what happened in Abraham’s life. I want to tell you that Jesus wants you to own nothing and for you to give Him complete ownership of everything you have. If you missed the previous post and want to read the first half to “catch up,” click here: Brian’s Previous Post

At this point, Abraham has followed God’s commands, he has taken Isaac to a mountain, and he has prepared to sacrifice his son, believing that God could somehow raise him from the dead. He has raised his hand to kill Isaac, but at the very last moment God stopped Abraham. He tells him:

    I never intended that you should actually slay your son. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there…. Now you may have the boy, sound and well…seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

    The old man of God lifted his head to respond to the Voice, and stood there on the mount strong and pure and grand, a man marked out by the Lord for special treatment, a friend and favorite of the Most High. Now he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed nothing. He had concentrated his all in the person of his dear son, and God had taken it from him. God could have begun out on the margin of Abraham’s life and worked inward to the center.

    But He chose rather to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp act of separation…. It hurt cruelly, but it was effective. I have said that Abraham possessed nothing. Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side.

    He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but the wise will understand. After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words “my” and “mine” never again had the same meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from his heart. Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner heart was free from them. The world said, “Abraham is rich,” but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal.

    There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in the life. Because it is so natural, it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is. But its outworkings are tragic. We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety. This is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save.

    Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.

Abraham committed all He had to God. He retained ownership of nothing – not even the life of His own precious child. No matter what God commanded, Abraham was willing to do. Am I a person who has committed everything to God for safe-keeping? Have I turned all that I possess over to Him so that I am now one who owns nothing and yet find myself rich in Him?

What are the things that you have refused to give to Him?

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Christian Living

If He Is Worth Anything, He Is Worth Everything

My last post included this idea: If Jesus is worth Anything, then He is worth Everything.
Today is a follow-up to that statement.
My last few posts have been about the need to let go of things in order to take hold of Jesus.
Jesus tells us that to do this we even have to let go of our families and our very lives.

But what does that look like in real life?
I want to share with you some words from A.W. Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God. He provides a great illustration of what it means to believe that God is worth EVERYthing. And he does this by using the story of Abraham. I imagine you will see yourself somewhere in the story:

    In the story of Abraham and Isaac we have a dramatic picture of the surrendered life….

    Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old enough indeed to have been his grandfather, and the child became at once the delight and idol of his heart. From the moment he first stooped to take the tiny form awkwardly in his arms, he was an eager love slave of his son. God went out of His way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it is not hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his father’s heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream. As he watched Isaac grow from babyhood to young manhood, the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in….

    “Now take your son,” said God to Abraham, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go into the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.” fire symbolizing a burnt offering where we give all things to the One worth everything

    The writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on the hillside when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination can gaze in wonder at this bent form of a man wrestling under the stars. Possibly not again until One greater than Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit a human soul.

    If only the man himself might have been allowed to die. That would have been a thousand times easier, for he was old now, and to die would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long with God. Besides, it would have been a last, sweet pleasure to let his dimming vision rest upon the figure of his stalwart son who would live to carry on the Abrahamic line and fulfill in himself the promises of God made long before in Ur of the Chaldees.

    How could he slay his son! Even if he could get the consent of his wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with the promise, “Through Isaac your descendants shall be named”? This was Abraham’s trial by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars still shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac lay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to lighten the east, the old saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had directed him to do, and then trust God to raise him from the dead. This, says the writer to the Hebrews, was the solution his aching heart found sometime in the dark night, and he rose “early in the morning” to carry out the plan. It is beautiful to see that, while he erred as to God’s method, he had correctly sensed the secret of His great heart. And the solution lines up well with the New Testament Scripture, “Whosoever will lose for my sake shall find.”

    God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbid him to lay a hand upon the boy. To the wondering patriarch He now says in effect, “It’s all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay your son. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion that existed in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take him and go back to your tent. Now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

And though God always knew Abraham’s heart, now Abraham also knew where his chief allegiance lay.
Abraham had learned that “If God is worth anything, He is worth Everything.”
There is a bit more of Tozer’s illustration that I’ll share with you next time.

Until then… what do you need to remove from the temple of your heart so that God might reign unchallenged there?

(Public Domain Image Credit: the image was obtained from picturespublicdomain.com/fire-picture-public-domain/fire-public-domain, though as of 3/31/2015, this link is no longer valid.)

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Christian Living

Dying Is Easier Than Living

a cemetery to symbolize that dying is easier than living Dying… Easier Than Living? That can’t be true, can it?
Dying is something that many people fear.
Death is personified as a frightening grim reaper.
So how can death be easier than life?

For a Christian, death is not only easier than living… it is better than living.

Death is better than living?
Paul tells us – To Live is Christ, And To Die is Gain.
He says – death is very much better than life because it means I get to go and be with Christ forever. But if God has me staying here, then I know I have work to do for Him… to share Christ with more people and disciple them.

But if we have to stay on in this “fallen world,” then there will be difficulties, there will be trials, there will be temptations. These things can make living seem like a difficult prospect.

Jesus tells us that in to become a follower of His, you must lose your life… you must die to self.

To lose my life for Christ means that I make a decision to refuse to reject and renounce Christ, even if that means that I might face the punishment of death. And honestly, in many ways it would be easier to die as a martyr than to live for Christ in the way that He expects and requires. “Going out in a blaze of glory” for Him could be noble and heroic. People would write about me and my faith. I would be inspiration for others. But living for Him day in and day out. Living for Him in the midst of the trials and temptations I face doesn’t seem particularly heroic, and it sure can seem tough.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Jesus demands loyalty to Him over our family. Not only does He demand loyalty over family, he also demands loyalty over self and over every part of our lives. The more we love this life and its rewards (leisure, power, popularity, financial security), the more we will discover how empty they really are. The best way to “find” real life, then, is to loosen our grasp on earthly rewards so that we can be free to follow Christ. We must risk pain, discomfort, conflict, and stress. We must acknowledge Christ’s claim over our plans, our dreams, & our careers.

Matthew Henry stated it this way:
“Now thus the terms are settled; if religion be worth any thing, it is worth every thing: and, therefore, all who believe the truth of it, will soon come up to the price of it; and they who make it their business and bliss, will make every thing else to yield to it. Those who do not like Christ on these terms, may leave him at their own peril.”

I believe that Jesus is worth every thing.
I believe He is worth my very life.