Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Picture of a changed life!

         I stumbled across a picture that was given to me after a sermon I preached awhile back.  The sermon was on living a life of thanksgiving and I focused on how the Gospel gives us the motivation to live a life of thanksgiving.  I talked about how Jesus changes everything!  Here were my five points.

1.) Before Jesus you were separated from God, after Jesus you have come into a relationship with God.          
2.)  Before Jesus you were dead in your sins, after Jesus you have become a new creation.
3.)  Before Jesus you were enemies of God, after Jesus you became friends with God.
4.)  Before Jesus you were under the wrath of God, after Jesus you became a child of God.
5.)  Before Jesus you were without hope for today and for eternity, after Jesus you have incredible hope      for today and for eternity.

         While I was preaching a young boy drew a picture of who we were before Jesus and who we are after Jesus.  Here was his picture on the back of the note sheet…. 


That sums it up pretty well!  We are a mess without Jesus, and when we enter into a relationship with Jesus he changes us, he makes us into a new creation!  Be thankful today for what Jesus has done in your life!  I am!

Monday, December 9, 2013

Faith Like a Child: You are dad!

      Becoming a dad  has opened up my eyes to some of the beautiful truths in Scripture that speak of God being our father, being our dad.  A couple situations that happened recently made me realize how beautiful it is that God is our dad.  On a Sunday morning when we were in church worshipping I was standing holding my three year old when she pointed at my name tag asking what it was and I told her that it told people what my name was.  She responding with a big smile and said, "daddy."  To my three year old that is my name, that is who I am.
     The other situation happened several weeks ago as we were playing at a park and my seven year old son was running around and playing with some other kids and I looked up to see him looking over the top of the play structure talking to his new friend, pointing at me, and saying, "That's my dad."  These two situations have given me pause in how to respond to the question who is God.  That is an extremely important question and it can answered in many different ways which are truthful and correct.  We can say God is creator.  God is holy.  God is just.  God is gracious.  God is love.  God is trinitarian.  God is glorious.  Those are all truthful statements of who God is.  However, as truthful as those descriptors are, sometimes they can be hard to grasp, to fully understand, and even harder to communicate to another person.  Maybe we would do better to begin answering the question "Who is God" by stating that he is my dad.  He loves me, he takes care of me.  When we see God working around us we can point to that and say, "that's my dad, he did that."  When we look at a beautiful sunset we can point to it and say, "my dad made that."
        God beginning in Genesis chapter three, where sin entered the scene and God's relationship with humans was broken, went on a relentless pursuit to restore that relationship.  The Bible is this massive love story where God is striving to make himself known to all people's and ultimately sends his own son to make himself known and to be able to restore the relationship that was broken.  God wanted to restore a father/son or father/daughter relationship.  More than God wants you to know that He is Holy, God wants you to know him as daddy.  More than God wants you to know that He is just, he wants you to know that he LOVES YOU and has done everything that needed to be done to restore this broken relationship.  It is in the context of a relationship that you will begin to understand what it means that God is creator, that God is holy, that God is gracious, that God is just, but the relationship is the starting place.  God is my dad!  God is my father!  That blows my mind!  "That's My DAD!"
     

Monday, December 2, 2013

Seeing our sin helps us to love well!

       It seems that within American Christianity we shy away more and more from talking about sin.  We have changed the vocabulary from words like sin, wickedness,  and evil, to words like mistakes, shortcomings, and "my bad."  Rarely do we talk about the magnitude of sin and sinners before a holy and perfect God.  Rarely do we pause to contemplate what it means to sin, what it does to our relationship with God and that is a problem.
       Last week as I was reading in the Gospel of Mark I read Mark 8 beginning in verse 36 where Jesus forgives a woman who had sinned much.  The context is that Jesus is eating at one of the phariseas homes and a woman who was described in the account as a "sinner" came in wiped and washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and hair and anointed them.  The Pharisees could not grasp why Jesus would allow a woman with the reputation of this woman to do this.  Let's jump into the story at verse 41, "A certain moneylender had two debtors.  One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  When they could not pay he cancelled the debt of both.  Now which of them will love him more?  Simon answered, 'The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.'  And he said to him, 'You have judged rightly.'  Turning toward the woman he said to Simon, 'Do you see this woman?  I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.  Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven- for she has loved much.  But he who is forgiven little, loves little.' And he said to her, 'Your sins are forgiven.'"
       When we begin to minimize the magnitude of sin before a holy God we minimize our love for God.  When we begin to redefine the words sin, evil, and wickedness we redefine our ability to stand amazed at God's incredible love and grace towards us.  If God has only forgiven a "pretty good" person that does not motivate us to live the kind of counter-cultural, upside down, life that the Gospel calls us to live.  However, when God forgives someone who is a sinner, who has offended God deeply, who is wicked, who is evil, (which describes all of us) that gives incredible motivation and reason for that person to love God, to follow God, to live for Him.  That person is not following Jesus because they have to, they are following Jesus because they want to!  Understanding who we are in our sin, understand the magnitude of our sins before the God who created us, is the key to stop living a Christian life feeling like we have to serve God and to start living a Christian life where we want to serve God.
        Let us continue to talk about sin.  Let us continue to reflect on and think about the magnitude of our sin.  Let us continue to realize more and more how sin looks to our creator and sustainer.  When we do we will see more and more clearly how sinful we are.  How wicked we are.  How evil we are.  As we see that we will also see the amazing, astounding, unbelievable grace of God that has forgiven me and as a result we will love much!