Tag: commitment

Categories
Christian Living

Resolutions: A Personal Worship Plan

New Year's Resolutions List for 2014 to focus on a personal worship planWe are a month into 2014, and writing about my reading lists made me think about my other “resolutions.” Did you make any for 2014? Or have you come to the point where you have broken so many that your only resolution is to not make any more resolutions?

Even so, We make all sorts of plans throughout any given year. We resolve to make changes in our exercise, our eating habits, our business goals…. Shouldn’t we also give some thought to resolving to grow in our Christian lives?

Do you have a goal for your Bible reading, prayer life, charitable giving, church attendance, ministry involvement, etc.?

Maybe you are thinking, but why do so, when I so often fail at my New Years’ Resolutions? Should I write down more goals that if I don’t meet, I will feel guilty about?

In one of the most widely read books of all time – The Imitation of Christ – Thomas a Kempis reminds us – “Each day we ought to renew our resolutions as though it were the first day of our life in Christ. Because as our intention is, so will be our progress; so he who desires godly perfection must be very diligent. We know that even a strong-willed man fails Christ frequently, but what about the man who thinks of Christ seldom or is half-hearted in his attempts to live for Him? We must always have a fixed mindset, especially against those things which tempt us the most. In the morning make a resolution and in the evening examine yourself on how you did, what you have done and thought. Each day, read or write or pray or meditate or do something for the common good.”

And Thomas a Kempis reminds us why we need to do so – “as our intention is, so will be our progress.” Or as we might hear it stated today – “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”

Don’t stop setting spiritual goals simply because of possible guilt if you don’t meet them. Instead, be encouraged at what progress you do make, and become re-focused to go even farther tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.

Have you set any goals in your Christian life for 2014?

Next time, I’ll share some ideas you might want to consider in resolving to improve your Bible reading, prayer life, ministry involvement, etc.

Categories
Christian Living

What Business Do You Have With Me?

In the strange exorcism I mentioned in my last post, we find that Jesus’ great compassion shows how He places much greater value on people than on property. But the men who owned the pigs in the encounter were furious that they lost their property, even though two men were radically healed. In fact the men of the town then came out and asked Jesus to leave their town.

The problem is that the men “preferred their property to the Savior.”

“It is no uncommon thing for men to love the world so much; to love property so much as to see no beauty in religion, and no excellence in the Savior; and, rather than part with their material belongings, to ask Jesus to withdraw from them” (Albert Barnes).

They wanted to have no business with Jesus.

Interestingly enough, at the beginning of this encounter, the demon “spokesman” asks – “What business do you have with me, Jesus?”
question mark die But isn’t this really the question everyone should be asking? In the demonic encounter we find that…
The business Jesus had with the demons was to get them out of the two men.
The business He had with the owners of the pigs was to give them spiritual healing, but they were not willing due to their focus on self.
The business He had with one of the healed men was to send him as a witness to others who lived nearby.

What a great question for us to ask as well – Jesus, What business do you have with me today?

What do you think He would answer and say?
And after you heard His answer, would you be ready to obey?

The gap between peoples’ beliefs & actions seems to be growing wider every day.
We know what to do and yet we don’t do it.
Others have decided to sit and not grow – they still “need milk” and are not yet ready for the “meat” of truths in God’s Word.

If we have committed to making Jesus the Master of our lives, then we will be in the process of asking Him what is the next step He wants us to take and we will be obedient to actually take it.

Too many people are not serving nor are planning to serve in their church; they are not living in joy; not serving God with their marriage; not making disciples of their children; not growing spiritually; they are choosing immorality over purity & obedience.

Maybe today we need to ask – What business do you have with me, Jesus?
And then listen… and obey.

Categories
Worship

I Have Missed You! (And Our Interaction)

What happens when I take a short hiatus from writing? Mainly I miss the interaction I have with you!

A few people have wondered something along the lines of “where did Brian’s devotionals disappear to? Did I get dropped off the email list? Has he stopped writing?” And in the absence of the devotionals, several of you told me that you missed them. Thank you for encouraging me to get back to writing. The truth is that I simply got too busy and my writing had to be “dropped” for a time (it has been almost a month. ouch! that’s way too long).

The situation is that each morning I start my day off with my own Bible reading and prayer. When I get into a situation when I am in a time crunch, it would be quite easy to let my devotional time go, so that I could write something for my blog. Most of the time crunch has come during these last three weeks in the form of our cross-country drive to California and the activities I have been part of in-between the driving (2200 miles there and another 2200 miles back!). It is true that I could have kept up the blog, by letting some of my devotional time go, but I have made a commitment to God that my time with Him will remain a top priority. Not for His sake, but for mine. The more time I spend with Him, the healthier I find that I am – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

I hope you have made that same commitment to Him. That you will spend time with Him each day in Bible reading and prayer. That your commitment to time with Him will take precedent over the morning newspaper, Good Morning America, and Sportscenter. Or if you use the evening as time to connect with Him, that you won’t allow Duck Dynasty, Fox News, or catching up on all the Facebook status updates to become a higher priority than your daily fellowship with Him. If we are not careful… if we are not intentional in our time with him… then without even realizing it, our time is consumed with all the busyness of each day. To grow in Christ, we have to make a solid commitment to carve out time with Him. And Satan isn’t going to make it easy. The question is whether we will develop the discipline to be the disciples we told Him we would be when we started our journeys with Him. Let’s keep encouraging each other onto deeper discipleship and spiritual maturity!

Let’s go “further up and further in!”

(bonus points if you know where the last quote is from without looking it up!)

Categories
Relationships

True Love Ain’t Free

free parking 2
There ain’t much in life that is free.
Certainly not love.
True love demands commitment.
True love is an active choice of binding oneself to another.

“They have invented a new phrase that is a black-and-white contradiction in two words—”free love.” As if a lover had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself….”

The quote is from G.K. Chesterton. And I love how he finishes this thought about the binding nature of love. He says that “the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word.”

When we say “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, & in health,” we are making an active, binding statement. We are giving our word that we will be bound up with the other person for a lifetime.

Ravi Zacharias reflects (somewhat deeply) on this idea of binding love:
“Unfortunately in the English language we have cheated ourselves by using the same [word] to cover a wide variety of relationships. In the Greek language there were four different words, each describing a different kind of love:
      ‘Agape’ refers to a pure love with particular reference to God.
      ‘Phileo’ is the love of friendship.
      ‘Storge’ describes the love of a parent.
      ‘Eros’ is romantic love.

“Note carefully that although only one of the loves [eros] is physically consummated, all of them involve commitment. However, in our culture when we say “love” it is most often physical love that is implied, and that devoid of commitment. How strange that we call the sexual act “making love” when in actuality if that act is without commitment…it is a literal and figurative denuding of love in which the individual is degraded to an object.”

“When love is shallow the heart is empty, but if the sacrifice of love is understood, one can drink deeply from its cup and be completely fulfilled.”

I hope that my love for others will always be a love that has commitment backing it up.
How has someone shown you that love is a commitment?

Tozer: The true follower of Christ will not ask, “If I embrace this truth, what will it cost me?”

— brian rushing