Month: January 2013

I decided to be a faithful lover of God when I was 17, but it took me a while to understand all that might imply for living my life. When I turned 18 in November, I made it a habit to get drunk every weekend (the legal drinking age was 18 back then). I was a happy drunk, and as far as I know, I didn’t hurt anyone while drunk. By May, however, I had come to realize that excessive consumption of alcohol was not doing anything to glorify or honor God. I imagined that my friends who saw me in my inebriated state had less respect for anything I might say to encourage them to draw closer to God. Perhaps it was my conscience speaking to me, or perhaps it was the Holy Spirit. Whatever the source, it was right!

While I didn’t know how to phrase it back then, I think I realized deep down that I was living a double life. On Sundays and the days I was meeting for worship, fellowship, and Bible study, I was living an upright life, but on Saturdays, I was doing whatever I pleased. When I committed myself to follow God, I didn’t just commit some days of the week — I commit my whole life, every single moment of every single day.

Continue reading “How to Stop Living a Double Life”

I was on silent retreat one day when the Lord spoke to my heart about something that was burdening me. By the way, a silent retreat is such a blessing! From my perspective, it’s where I get to hang with the Creator of the Universe, who happens to love spending time with me as much as I love spending time with Him! (I’m sure His love language must be quality time — or at least it is when I’m around Him — just joshing, I’m sure He flows in all love languages.)

On this particular retreat, I had been thinking about my response to something the day before, worrying about whether some of the things I typically say and teach about intimacy with God might make some people think I was weird or irrelevant or whatever. As I was talking with the Lord about this, I believe He told me that any time I have a chance to speak and to minister, there will always be an intermingling of precious ones with swine — those naysayers, scoffers, and mockers. But that if I wasn’t bold enough to speak to the precious ones, then they wouldn’t have the chance to grow and benefit from having someone point the way while they are early in their journey, and so they might have to wait much of their lives to figure some of the things out.

Continue reading “Go For It! Overcoming Fear in Speaking What God Puts on Your Heart”

This is the third in a series of posts on 2 Corinthians 5:14-21.  In the first post, I focused on the first major topic of the passage, “Christ’s love compels us”. That phrase affirms for us the immeasurable value of God’s love for us, and how that love, when fully grasped, turns our world upside down and changes our hearts and steers our lives in new directions.  In the second post in the series, we talked about two realities of the life in Christ: the exchanged life (Christ and us) and newness of life in Christ.

Now in the third post, we examine what Christ’s love ought to compel us to do, empowered by the new and exchanged life.  As we grasp this, we gain both purpose and mission, for the Church and for each one of us.  This is laid out for us in the second part of verse 18 through verse 20.

“[God] gave us the ministry of reconciliation: [19] that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. [20] We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (NIV1984).

This tells us that God gave us the ministry of reconciliation.  But what is that? Reconciliation means bringing two parties back together that have something between them that keeps them separated, living like enemies or at least like strangers rather than like family.  And while all kinds of reconciliation are valuable (Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers” in Matthew 5:9), the Apostle Paul specifically is referring to reconciliation between a person and God.  If there is any doubt about that, look at verse 20, where it specifically says, “be reconciled to God”.

Continue reading “Christ’s Love Compels Us (Part 3): We are Called to be Reconcilers”

I felt really revived and strong after a retreat I was on a couple of years ago (a Chrysalis young adult team retreat). I felt closer to God than I had in a long time, and I also felt a heightened state of alert regarding the plans of the enemy, and felt strong for warring against him. As I was riding into work the next day, I was thinking about a suggestion made on the retreat, to start off a talk with a personal story, and was trying to figure out how to do that with one of my talks for the upcoming retreat (a full Chrysalis weekend). I was thinking that I wanted to share pictures of places that were significant at various points in my life for sharing times of intimacy with God.

Most of my day I was feeling joyful and optimistic. Then, in the last hour before heading home, my mood turned sour. I felt like I was worthy of ridicule — and I couldn’t figure out what shifted things, particularly so quickly. On my journey home, I replayed the last hour or two of work to see if I could trace at what point the shift occurred. And I realized that I had a fleeting thought toward the end of the day that sharing pictures of these places that were significant to me would make me laughable — that I was really weird, and that everybody would see that.

So when I realized the source of the thought, I got mad that the devil was so subtle and deceptive, and that he uses these tactics on people. I’ve been in Christ a long time, so I was thankful that I was aware enough not to just give in to it, but to seek the source. And while I wasn’t instantly revived, in another hour or two, I was much closer to my former joyful state.

Continue reading “Guarding Your Heart Against Subtle Suggestions and Lies of the Enemy”

You… must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. [12] Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. [13] Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. — Romans 6:11-13 (ESV)

The Apostle Paul’s objective in chapter 6 of Romans is to try to teach us how to live free from sin. He doesn’t usually write “sinning”, but “sin”. It is almost as if sin, as used in this chapter, is alive, like it is an evil ruler, a person. In verse 11, we see that we are “dead to sin” but “alive to God”. Now, simple parallel structure of English tells us that “sin” and “God” are the same kind of elements, not just nouns, but because we know that God is a “being”, so sin must also be a “being”. The idea of sin as a “being” is carried forward in verse 12, when we are told to not let sin reign (reign means to rule like a king); and in verse 13, where we are told not to present our “members to sin”, but instead, present our “members to God”.

The reason we can choose not to let sin reign (v. 12) is because of what we have studied previously in verse 6, where we read that we were crucified with Jesus, and therefore are freed from being slaves to sin. Because we are changed people by putting our faith in Jesus and experiencing baptism, we now have power to choose who will reign in our lives. Before, we were powerless, being bound by sin. Now, we are empowered. But we still need to choose to walk free. And I think it helps to really understand something new has taken place because of Jesus. It’s like a horse being penned up. If he is used to being limited by the fence, he may stay in the pen, even if a gate is open somewhere. The horse needs to be aware of the open gate — then walk through it — if he will escape the confines of the fence.

Continue reading ““O Wretched Man That I Am” — NOT! (Part 7: Sin Personified as a Defeated King)”