Tag: Jesus

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Missions

What Does a Dead Church Look Like? A Dilapidated Building?

picture of an abandoned church building that is falling apart, perhaps what some would call a dead church

I have always appreciated this description of a Dead Church that I ran across a few years ago:

A painter was asked to paint a picture of a dead church. What the client expected was probably the picture of an old ruin that had been taken over by vines of ivy and has been left in disrepair, such as the remains of some Gothic cathedral such as are seen in France or Italy. The painter, however, took a different approach, and painted a picture that was like a sermon. On his canvas he painted the inside of a cozy, well-furnished church: upholstered pews, a large organ, a beautiful wooden pulpit, and a congregation whose appearance indicated sophistication and prosperity. But over in the corner near the exit, he painted the picture of a box bearing the inscription “FOR MISSIONS,” and covering over the slot for contributions you could see a large, undisturbed cobweb. The painter knew that a church that cares nothing for missions is dead (or is dying), even if there are plenty of people in attendance.

James tells us to “Be Doers of the Word and not Hearers only.”
If you are involved in a healthy church, you’ve heard that you should be involved in missions. So have you done anything about it? It doesn’t have to be missions overseas. There are people who live near you and work beside you who God has placed near you for a reason.

Don’t be so busy with your own life that you miss the very ones that God has brought into your pathway, so that you can be the hands and feet and voice of Christ to these who are hurting and need to know Jesus.

Pray that God would break your heart for the people around you who need to know Him.

Categories
Jesus

Hello 2017 – Let’s Hit The Reset Button!

Well Hello. It seems we’ve met here before, but it seems it was a long time ago. Let me introduce myself… again. I’m Brian… and somehow I got lost out on the information superhighway.

Well, I didn’t actually get lost, but I did disappear! In January of 2015 I set out on a journey with a goal of posting on my website every day (and it then gets posted to email, Facebook, etc.). I didn’t quite meet the goal, but I came close with 340 posts instead of 365. So in 2016, I set out on a new journey with a slightly less ambition goal. I got 7 posts done in January and February toward that goal.

And then I stopped posting completely. I guess I achieved my less ambitious goal!
It has now been 11 months since I have posted anything.

While I could offer plenty of excuses for why I have been absent, it wouldn’t be very thrilling reading material. So instead of boring you with those details, let me just say that it is time for me to hit the reset button. Reset button from Nintendo I now hope to wade back into the waters. I think I will set my new goal to fall somewhere in-between my number of postings from 2015 and 2016 (So I just need to fall somewhere between the narrow range of 7 and 340 posts!). Don’t get excited about me coming back just yet. Let’s see if it actually holds up!

I did appreciate the kind words from several of you who indicated that you missed the devotional thoughts when they stopped coming. So I’m hitting the reset button and…off we go again.

Let’s think a bit more about that “reset button.” The reset button is great for gamers. You are playing a game, and it isn’t going the way you want. Hit the reset button… and start over. But we now find the reset button in all sorts of technology. You’re phone isn’t working right because you downloaded a problematic app. Pull out a paper clip, unwind the end, and press it into the tiny reset button hole… and start over.

Wouldn’t it be great if when life wasn’t going the way you wanted, if life wasn’t working just right because you made a wrong choice, and you could simply hit the reset button… and start over?

In a way, with Jesus, we can. He offers us forgiveness that cancels out our debts:
“When you were dead in your transgressions… Jesus made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” RESET!

Our sins can still have earthly consequences that we may have to face, such as if you were speeding you might still have to pay a fine, but the spiritual consequences of eternal punishment for sin… RESET… Jesus has wiped out the consequences for you by paying for the consequences Himself.

I’m so glad that God provided me with a “reset” opportunity through Jesus and that I have received undeserved forgiveness through His grace.

Categories
Christian Living

Walking with Christ is worth it even if no one else walks beside us.

close up of a person's feet as they are walking as a symbol of us determining if we will walk with JesusSo I ended my previous post about walking with Christ with these words:

This life can be (and will be) a struggle, but God will be with you as you walk a difficult path due to difficult people. Keep pressing on with Him. Working with Him and walking with Him is worth it!

Though Jeremiah had a God-given purpose and was living in the very center of God’s will, he became frustrated because people would not listen to him and had turned against him. He was growing tired of the struggle of living for God while seemingly getting very little in return.

You might also find yourself in that place at some times in life. You may be thinking, “That’s where I am right now.” Though Jeremiah did complain to God about the situation, he followed up his complaint with some powerful words which tell us that even though he was frustrated, he did think that serving God was more important than his own discomfort. He was frustrated, but he knew that he wanted to serve God more than he wanted to be popular and more than he wanted to have an easy life. He said:

But if I say I’ll never mention the LORD or speak in his name, his word burns in my heart like a fire. It’s like a fire in my bones! I am worn out trying to hold it in! Indeed, I cannot do it!
I have heard the many rumors about me…. Even my old friends are watching me, waiting for a fatal slip….
But the LORD stands beside me like a great warrior! Jeremiah 20:9-11

Jeremiah understood this truth:
Walking with Christ is worth it, even if no one else walks beside us.

Walking with Christ is worth it, because doing so will change our lives and it also has the power to change someone else’s life.

Let me end with an example from the Gulf Coast after Katrina had come through. One of my fellow church members was working with an organization to provide grants to people who needed assistance. One man came in and during his interview, he shared this with my friend:

“My entire life, I have been so bad to God. But ever since Katrina, He has been so good to me. Volunteers are rebuilding my house, God has provided for my needs through church people from other parts of our country, and I have a restored relationship with God. All of the loss and devastation that happened to me through Katrina was worth it for me to have a right relationship with God.”

Isn’t that what we want to hear someone say as a result of our involvement in their lives? That someone who was hurting is now healing? That someone who was Lost is now Found? And that it is due to them watching how you live your life as a ministry to them?

It is true that God has called you to a difficult task – to live for Him and be His hands and feet in the midst of difficult people (sinful people, of which you also are one), but He has a plan for using you to make a difference in the peoples’ lives that He has placed around you.

Let us be encouraged by what Jeremiah discovered, that though God has called us into a struggle of ministering to difficult people in difficult places, we are loved by Him and He is our great warrior, our mighty champion.

Let us not worry so much about how God might bless our lives, but let us consider how we might use our lives to bless the Lord, our great champion.

Categories
Jesus

How Narrow is the Path that leads to God?

a narrow path

In my previous post I shared the quote:
“No wonder the world has passed by the church. We don’t need reforming; we need to be regenerated. We need to be born again.”
–J. Vernon McGee
            (click here to see the previous post)

But aren’t most of us pretty decent people? Aren’t we pretty good? Do we really need to say such negative things about people in general? No. No we are not. And yes we do. Here is why we must say we need to be regenerated:

We need a new nature because we naturally have a sinful nature, and that sinful nature is not going to make it into heaven. Therefore you have to get rid of your sinful nature. But you can’t do it on your own. You don’t have the ability. If you go to heaven and enter the presence of Holy God, it will only be because you trusted the One who died for you – Jesus.

Your only way to come to God is through Jesus.

Now some will want to argue with this statement and say “That is so narrow-minded. There must be another way. God wouldn’t make forming a relationship with Him that narrow.”

But such ideas go directly against the words of the Bible. Specifically they go against the very words of Jesus who said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me.” That is pretty narrow. But who should I believe? Who do I trust? Jesus? Or someone who is “not Jesus” but who insists to me that there must be another way?

Hmmmm…. I think my best option is to believe Jesus.
I imagine He has a better handle on the situation than Uncle Jim, my neighbor Bob, or even myself.

If I were a betting man, I think it will be a much better “bet” for me to to take Jesus at His Word than for me to hope that my unbiblical guesses about God are right and that He’ll let me into His presence anyway. Can you imagine saying to God: “Oh. Ummm. You mean, God, that you were serious about all those words in the Bible? Such as the fact that I had to choose Jesus during my lifetime on earth? I was kind of hoping that some of those words were wrong. I was figuring that whoever wrote down Jesus’ words didn’t write them down correctly. So is it OK that I didn’t believe them? You’ll let me slide on it, right?”

It would not be wise to end this life with your hopes set with that type of mentality.

God is big enough to preserve His words the way He wanted them recorded. I mean, He’s God. And the words that God has recorded for us in the Bible make it very clear: Your one and only way to be in the presence of Holy God for all eternity is through a relationship with Jesus.

Yes, that is narrow.
But it is very clear.
God Himself tells us: To be with Me for eternity, you need to be regenerated. You need to be born again.

Categories
Jesus

Intentionally Choosing Death… How Strange

“Intentionally Choosing Death… How Strange”
  by brian rushing

“It is not strange that He, the Author of life, should rise from the dead. If he was truly God the Son, it is much more startling that he should die than that he should rise again.”

Absolutely.
It is not odd that the one who raised people from the dead could Himself rise from the dead. But it is very remarkable (strange, odd, unfathomable) that He would die in the first place.

gravestone symbolizing Jesus choosing death
And yet, parents, isn’t it true that you would willingly trade places with one of your children facing death in order that they (the child) could continue on in life? Certainly. Many children unfortunately end up in the hospital struggling for life. Parents pray fervently, and many will somewhere in one or more of those prayers ask God to let them trade places with their precious child. It is natural for us to be willing to choose death in order for us to save someone we desperately love.

What Jesus did for us is similar. The only way that I would be able to continue on in life forever was for Him to die as a substitute and take the punishment I deserved. So He willingly, intentionally chose death due to His love. In fact, He was born to die.

Though I now try to avoid using the word “church” to refer to a location, I used to call the main worship service on Sunday, “Big Church.” I still hear kids call it that today. And the word “Incarnation” is one of those “Big Church” words. At it’s simplest, it means a divine being taking a human form… God becoming a man.

How do we wrap our heads around that idea? Well, the New Testament doesn’t encourage us to worry too much over how it works, but rather encourages us “to worship God for the love that was shown in it. For it was a great act of condescension and self-humbling. ‘He, who had always been God by nature,’ writes Paul, ‘did not cling to his privileges as God’s equal, but stripped Himself of every advantage by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born a man, And, plainly seen as a human being, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, to the point of death, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal.’ And all this was for our salvation.”

“The key text in the New Testament for interpreting the Incarnation is ‘You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake’s he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.’ When Paul talks of the Son as having emptied himself and become poor, what he has in mind…is the laying aside not of divine powers and attributes but of divine glory and dignity.”

God the Son, Jesus, while in Heaven in His full divine glory and dignity loved me and you. Due to that love, He laid aside His divine glory and dignity for a time so that he could be born as a human with a plan to die a cruel death as a substitute sacrifice for you and me. In your eyes, I’m not worth that. And in my eyes, you’re not worth that. OK, maybe you and I would pick some people who we’d say are worth it, but there are a whole lot that we’d leave out. So I’m glad we weren’t the ones having to make a decision as to whether or not to lay aside divine glory and honor and dignity for the people walking around on this giant ball called Earth.

It is strange to think that Jesus…God the Son…would die at all, much less that He would willingly choose to die for such ungrateful, irritating people (including you and me). But, strangely, oddly, fortunately…He did!

Be sure to thank Him for setting aside His divine prerogatives in order to die for you! And then strive to tell this great news to someone else today.

        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)