Category: Christian Living

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Christian Living

Elimination: The Skill of Eliminating Distractions is Important

The Skill of Elimination – removing the things from your life that are negatively affecting your spiritual growth.

(And again, Facebook automation now only provides an excerpt, and so those FBers who want the full article will have to follow the link to my website. The best alternative would be to sign up for the email which sends the full article directly to your inbox. You can do that by clicking here.

photo of erasers to remind us use the skill of elimination
What Do You Need To Erase From Your Life?

Now back to the skill of elimination.

Continuing with the idea of the last few posts on discipleship, I want to remind you that Discipleship & Disciple-Making are key commands of Jesus.

You know that the 2 Greatest Commandments are:
    1. Love God with all you have, and
    2. Love others as yourself.

The way we are to accomplish these 2 commands is through obedience to the Great Commission, which Jesus stated as: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.”

Therefore, if this is Jesus’ Commission to us, then we each need to have an answer for how we are obeying it. We should be able to answer these two questions:
    Who is discipling me? and
    Who am I discipling?

Who is intentionally helping you to grow in love and obedience to Jesus?
Who are you intentionally helping to do the same?

In Robby Gallaty’s book, Rediscovering Discipleship, he shares a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Gallaty goes on to say that this kind of evaluation is very difficult because it removes what you want and reveals what God wants. And we know that God wants us to be discipled and be discipling others. Therefore, this means that some of us may need to think seriously about eliminating some activities in our lives so that we can experience the very best that Jesus wants for us.

We need to develop the skill of elimination and continually ask ourselves:
What do I need to eliminate from my life to be obedient to Jesus in the area of being discipled and being a disciple-maker?

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Categories
Christian Living

Embracing a Discipleship Commitment for Your Spiritual Growth

Part of the reason that I struggled with writing for my website in 2017 was my involvement in several discipleship groups during the year. At FBC Newton, we have been focused on developing these groups (D-Groups), and they have been my priority, so anything extra was relegated to the back-burner. But as the original groups have now split into multiple new groups, my time commitments are not quite as taxing as they were, and so I now have a bit more time to write. These D-groups have been a blessing to me, and I wanted to share with you the commitments of the groups, because I think they are important commitments for every Christian to embrace.

Each group consist of 3-5 people of the same gender who meet together regularly to

  • Pray for one another.
  • Discuss how to live out the teachings of Jesus.
  • Sharpen one another in Christian living.
  • Hold each other accountable in their Christian walk.

    • Don’t each of us need these things in our lives to aid us in our Christian discipleship?

    “But that means you are asking me to add something extra to my schedule. Do you know how busy I am?”

    I know, we are all extremely busy. But…

    Do you not have time for something extra if it will help you grow significantly with Jesus Christ?
    If your answer is “No, I do not,” then that may mean that you need to give something else up.

    a pocketwatch to symbolize the need to make time for discipleship
    Will You Make Time For Discipleship This Year?

    Commitments to one of our Discipleship Group Include:

  • Meeting with your group regularly.
  • Reading at least 1 chapter of the Bible each day, Monday thru Friday.
  • Writing down what God is teaching you through your reading.
  • Sharing during the group.
  • And the final commitment is that at the end of no more than 2 years, the group will divide to start at least one additional group to do the same thing again with more people.


    • That’s It. Pretty simple commitments. Read God’s Word every day and get together with others to tell them how God is transforming you through it.

    So, if you know that the Great Commission of Jesus commands you to “Go and Make Disciples,” then how are you being obedient to His command?
            Who is discipling you?
            Who are you discipling?

    If you do not have a clear answer to these final questions, then something needs to change in your life to make space for obedience to a key command of Jesus!

    And let me just say… You can do this!

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    Categories
    Christian Living

    Being Obedient Means Always Placing Your Yes on the Altar

    What does it look like to be obedient to God at all times?
    What would it look like to always place your “yes” upon His altar?

    Isaiah tells us that he saw a most spectacular vision of God, and just the vision of God on His throne with the end of His robe filling up the temple had Isaiah falling down on his face and saying: “God, I will do whatever you ask of me.”

    There are great examples of those who have heard God’s call and simply answered “Whatever you ask God.” But there are other examples we find in the Bible as well:

    We see Moses say something along the lines of: “God, I have a bunch of excuses for You, but even if you can give me some great reasons as to why those excuses aren’t valid, please don’t ask me to do it. Find someone else. I don’t care if I’m the perfect person. I don’t care. Just don’t ask me.” Have you ever felt like that?

    We find Jonah’s attitude to be: “God has asked me to do something. I ain’t gonna. I’m skipping town. I’m going to go the exact opposite way that God told me to go.” Have you ever been that disobedient? Jonah eventually goes and is obedient (after being vomited out on the shore covered with the stomach contents of some great fish), but he obeys with anger and he is upset over the outcome of God’s kindness to people he doesn’t like.

    Who are you going to be like when God calls you? Awestruck Isaiah? Willing Joseph or Mary (see my earlier post by clicking here? Reluctant Moses? Rebellious Jonah?

    God still has the same call to each of us: “Who will go for Us, and whom shall I send?”

    I’m not talking about overseas missions. I’m not talking about going to a nation like Nineveh nor preaching repentance to an unreached people group in the wilds of the jungle. I’m not talking about going to a king like Pharaoh and trying to talk to heads of state about Jesus. Those things all scare us. Certainly, if that is what God calls you to do, then I hope you will answer that call, knowing that He will give you the ability to be obedient. But what I am talking about is that the call on your life is to be a missionary all the time to the people right around you.

    You are to be on mission for God all the time. Wherever you are going to work today – as an employer, as an employee, as a student, as a retiree going to drink coffee with some friends – Wherever you have been placed by life’s circumstances, your choices, and God’s sovereign hand – you are to be on mission for Him.

    You are to be the messenger of God for those that you are around. You are to say “Yes” to God every time he asks you to be obedient.

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    Christian Living

    Obedience to Jesus Can Be Tough

    Obedience can be tough.
    At times it will feel like climbing a mountain.
    a narrow path leading up a mountain - symbolizing the difficulty of obedience to Jesus
    What if your fiancée told you she was pregnant but that she hadn’t been sexually involved with anyone? You knew you hadn’t been sexually intimate with her, so how did this pregnancy happen if she hadn’t had sex with someone else? It would be tough to believe her, wouldn’t it? At least in today’s technological age, we might could discuss something such as in vitro fertilization, but that wasn’t available back in Joseph & Mary’s day.

    Mary told Joseph that she was pregnant. He knew that he wasn’t the father because they were engaged and had not yet had sex. And so when Mary shared that she had remained faithful to him, but that she had become pregnant by the power of God, he could not believe it. He determined that she had concocted some false story, and he decided he would “break off the engagement” quietly.

    Joseph could have cried out to the religious community and said, “This woman that I love, this woman that I have trusted, this woman that I pledged to marry has had sex with another man. Then she tried to tell me this preposterous story about what happened.” But he didn’t. Even though he didn’t believe her, he loved her and chose not to disparage her.

    I believe Joseph was heart-broken. The woman he loved had cheated on him (she hadn’t, but that’s what it looked like to him) and then she probably cried her eyes out telling him that it was a supernatural pregnancy from God. But who could believe that? So Joseph just determined that his fiancée whom he loved was lying to him and would not come clean, so he decided, “I’ll just end this quietly.” And his breaking off their marriage certainly also broke Mary’s heart. Can you imagine how many tears both of them shed over how this was all taking place?

    But then God sent an angel to Joseph to tell him that Mary had been completely truthful. Can you imagine the scene as Joseph ran back to Mary who is still crying tears over her upcoming divorce (because in those days the breaking of a “betrothal” required a divorce certificate). As he enters the room and sees her crying, he apologizes and says, “Mary, I believe you! God sent an angel to me. I’m sorry I ever doubted you. Please forgive me.” And then Mary’s tears of heartache were turned to tears of joy as the two of them embraced and prepared again for their upcoming marriage.

    But then came more difficulty, because now Joseph would have to explain to others about what had occurred, because if he was anything like me, I would not want anyone to tarnish my wife’s reputation, especially when she was simply doing God’s will. Mary is going to “start showing” that she is pregnant by the great big bulge that baby Jesus is going to cause. It is obvious to everyone that Mary is pregnant before the wedding. And now Joseph and Mary are telling a story that they didn’t have sex, but that Mary is miraculously pregnant by the hand of God. Everyone is thinking – what an ingenious (and ridiculous) excuse.

    God called Mary & Joseph to a difficult task. Mary, you are going to give birth to the Messiah, and Joseph you will raise Him as your son. And yet it will be difficult because people are going to call Mary a loose woman and call Jesus an illegitimate child (both were probably called much worse). Yet Mary and Joseph both chose to submit to God and follow through in difficult obedience all the same.

    They had hearts that said: “Whatever you ask God, we will do. We are Your servants.”

    God has not called you to such a difficult task. But he does expect you to be faithful to what He has commanded you to do. He does expect your obedience. You know something that He has impressed on your heart to do. Will you do it? Will you say, “Whatever you ask God. I am your servant”?

    Categories
    Christian Living

    Miracles of God – Where Are They Today?

    What happened to all those miracles? If only Jesus was still doing miracles.
    Then more people would believe.
    Then more people would live for God.
    Maybe, like my own family today, you are praying for a miracle, and are thinking that if only it would occur, then you would put more of your trust in God.
    It sounds reasonable, but is it true?

    I think this statement from Philip Yancey does a great job of explaining the relationship between miracles and faith:

    “Yes, Jesus performed miracles —around three dozen, depending on how you count them— but the Gospels actually downplay them. Often Jesus asked those who had seen a miracle not to tell anyone else. Some miracles, such as the Transfiguration or the raising of a twelve-year-old dead girl, he let only his closest disciples watch, with strict orders to keep things quiet. Though he never denied someone who asked for physical healing, he always turned down requests for a demonstration to amaze the crowds and impress important people. Jesus recognized early on that the excitement generated by miracles did not readily convert into life-changing faith.”

    stained glass window depicting Jesus performing miracles
    When we see a supernatural miracle we either have to say, “That didn’t actually happen. It was a trick…an illusion.” Or we have to say, “That really happened!”
    And if it really happened, then we have to credit it to someone. How did this happen? Who made it happen? And so, after many of Jesus’ miracles, we find that some people did believe. They saw a man who was born blind healed and able to see. They knew it really happened, and so they attributed it to God.

    But we have others who saw the exact same healing, investigated it, knew that it really occurred, knew it happened in connection with Jesus, but would not put their trust in Jesus. Their only option was to call him demon-possessed and attribute the work to Satan. They were basically saying “Jesus, You are doing undisputable miracles of healing people and helping people and even raising people from the dead, but we refuse to believe you are from God, so we have no other option but to call it the work of the devil.”

    And so even today, if a miracle occurred right in front of us, it doesn’t mean that it would definitely lead you or others to more faith in Jesus. Because, let’s be honest, miracles actually do still happen today, but perhaps they are not always in the form that you are wanting or requesting at that precise moment. We might be praying for a miracle of physical healing for a family member, but God is crafting miracles of another kind around us, or even within us, through the situation we are facing.

    It is tragic when someone sees a God-honoring miracle and they refuse to attribute it to God. What miracles can we still see today? The most common one is that we see people’s lives changed by the power of God. We see the hateful become loving, we see the greedy become generous, we see the immoral become pure, we see the liar become honest, we see the downcast become joyful. We see the power of God changing people and we can either attribute it to Him or we can explain it some other way.

    And the most important miracle that is still taking place regularly – is the power of resurrection – taking someone who was dead inside and making them alive.

    An Example

    Beth was one of my students, and she was one of the most positive students in my entire ministry. She came to know Jesus as a young teenager and was on fire for God. He brought a tremendous joy into her heart. She had some rough situations she had to endure in her life, she had to “grow up fast” and carry a lot of responsibility on her shoulders, but in the midst of it all, she remained positive, kind, and full of joy.

    One of Beth’s friends asked her one day (…and Beth, if you read this, please forgive me if I don’t get the quotes exactly right, but I’m doing my best from memory of this conversation that occurred more than 10 years ago!) He asked her one day – Beth, why is it that you are always so positive? Even when things aren’t going your way, you are always so kind to everyone else and you always have a smile on your face. How is that possible? And don’t tell me “Jesus.”
         Beth answered, “Ok.” And she began to walk off.
         He called to her, “Beth, wait. I asked you a question.”
         She said, “I know. But you told me not to tell you my one and only answer – because my answer is Jesus.”

    When we encounter these miracles – even the miracle of Beth having the joy of the Lord in the face of difficulty – we have to make a decision. Her friend had to make a decision – do I believe Beth’s answer? Or do I have to say that she is either a liar or confused about the real answer. He had already predetermined that Jesus couldn’t be the answer, so when that was her answer, he refused to accept it.

    After each miracle or sign of Jesus, people had to make a decision. The miracle you are requesting might not occur. But that doesn’t mean that God isn’t at work around you. You may just need to open your eyes to how God is crafting a miracle within you through your situation right now.