Good Gospel

In order to see our prayers answered we must pray with faith. in order to pray with faith we need a foundation for that faith; a promise of God or an understanding that what we are praying for is in His will. This is were most of us stumble. So in thinking about and discussing some of the promises of God and what we can expect as children of the king I've come to understand that many people either don’t understand or limit the goodness of God. We think in our minds that what the gospel actually says is too good to be true so we push it out to the future or to heaven not ever expecting that God love us and desires the best for us now and not just in heaven. The fact of the mater is that most of what Christ preached about was the Kingdom and the message of the Gospel is not merely about salvation from hell or even being “born again.” The point of the gospel was that God desires to bring heaven to earth. Go back and re-read The Lords Prayer or recite it to yourself and think as you do, “what if Christ was serious and wanted us to treat this as a literal prayer we were honestly to expect God to answer?”

Over the next few weeks I will be going through the teachings of Christ in the Gospels in an attempt to show just how good these promises are.

Consecration; not my problem

Ok so I’m way over caffeinated right now thanks to the coffee lady here at work giving me some extra shots of espresso for no apparent reason… (I’m not complaining lol) but yeah so I was thinking about my sanctification process and how it’s been going and I realized how much easier it is than I had ever before thought.

So here are my thoughts on it:

When we are trying to live a holy life it is us vs. us. So it’s the new us fighting against our old habits and our old ways of thinking/doing things.

As Christians we know what it is we are supposed to do and what it is we are supposed to want but when that doesn’t line up with what we really want or really want to do we have conflict within ourselves. Since we are exactly as strong as ourselves we could only win this internal battle, at best, about 50% of the time.

Now, we have outside influences of society, peer pressure, angelic, demonic and so on which all seek to influence us in one direction or another but ultimately we can only blame ourselves because our actions are our own.

So how does one go about aligning their life so that they are constantly winning the battle against themselves? Simple; you ask God to change your desires. Ask Him to align your heart with His. Then you no longer need to fight your desires because your desires are already that which is good and right. I do this and suddenly I’m no longer in a battle I can win only half the time. I’m no longer in any sort of battle for that matter.

I know this is not as epic as fighting your way through a monumental battle and coming out (potentially) victorious but I’d much rather have the guaranteed victory which I can take no credit for than the loss which I must claim full responsibility.

Holy Desire

1 Cor. 14:1 Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.

When I Had first returned to the Lord I went on a winter retreat with my church. it was a lot of fun, on the bus ride up we were all talking with each other about what we were hoping God would share with us and speak to us about. I was blessed that trip and I got to see God in action. The minister who was speaking that weekend was heavily gifted in the prophetic. Without fail he went to every person and told them God’s perspective on exactly what they had been talking about on the bus ride up. It was amazing to me. I remember thinking, “Why is this something I've never seen in action before? Why don’t we do this every day at church an not just here?” It was then and there I began to seek God for the gift of prophecy. I’d get to see it in bits and pieces here and there but never on the level that I was seeking after and to be honest I had just about all but given up.

I began thinking, well maybe God wants to bless me in another area and that was just what He used to get me excited about my faith and help to get me close to Him. Fast forward a few years and I’ve finally come to see how ignorant of a view that is. God does not trifle with His children! When you have a desire for a spiritual blessing, especially one which you are commanded to seek after in scripture, you can be sure it is the Spirit of God stirring it up inside of you. How often, after all, when left to our own devices do we desire what is good? We either lust after the things of the flesh or the things of the Spirit. When Holy Spirit excites us desire His gifting or any blessing for that matter we can be sure it will be given to us and we are bound by obedience to pursue and seek after that blessing until God, who is a good God, gives it to us. after all, it was His idea to give it to us in the first place.

The Promise & The Prayer

Daniel 9:2,3 “In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.”

For the longest time I was under the impression that once a thing was prophesied, that was it, it was done. I then began to wonder why I was seeing so many people with promises over their lives that were seemingly going nowhere. Promises that had been given to them years ago; just sitting there, dormant. I’ve seen people grow bitter toward God or confused thinking why hasn’t this come to pass. Maybe the word was wrong or, even worse, maybe there is no such thing as prophecy today. These people, myself included, were part of the unfortunate group of people perishing for lack of knowledge. You see just because God has declared something doesn’t mean He has taken our responsibility out of it. Remember, we are the ones He has given authority to (Psalm 115:16 “The heavens are the heavens of the LORD, But the earth He has given to the sons of men.”) and therefore He will not do anything unless we come into agreement with it through prayer. Daniel understood this which is why when he read a promise from the scriptures about the end of the desolations of Jerusalem he began to pray and seek God to see it through. This was not just some word given by a random prophet or someone from his local church they were the words of Jeremiah understood to be scripture; i.e. their Bible. so these words were known as authoritative words from God but Daniel still felt the need to pray that God would bring them to pass. If even the prophecies of scripture need to be prayed into being how much more should we be praying for the promises God has given us?
What are you waiting for? Break out the prophecies that have been given to you and read the promises you have written down. Pray to God until He gives you the release and says it will be done. If you don’t yet have any promises of your own go to your Bible and read until one jumps out at you and take that as your own. Seek the Lord for His blessing because He has promised it and is faithful.

the true call

Mark 1:17-20 And Jesus said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed Him. Going on a little farther, He saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were also in the boat mending the nets. Immediately He called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went away to follow Him.

These passages are in a stark contrast to what happens later in the ministry of Jesus once He has gained some popularity. People begin asking Him if they could follow Him (Luke 9:57-62) with a very different result. They were not turned down as much as shown where their hearts where not yet ready for the call to follow Christ. When your heart is not ready or, to put it another way, when you say, “I will follow you… but first” then you already prove you are not truly following Christ but your own path which you have decided would be good alongside the path Christ is on. You see you are still your own boss when you come to Christ with stipulations. Christ will have all or none of you. There is no in between for Him. Are you holding back? What have you told Christ you must do before you are ready to follow Him? It is that very thing which is keeping you back from the kingdom of God.

Ambition

So today I was talking to Jesus. Just trying to get to know Him better; on a more personal level. I was chatting with Him and He asked me why I wanted to know Him more. My honest answer was because I want to be a more effective minister. Not for greater intimacy or my love for Him. Now at first I was rather upset with myself because it was such a seemingly cold answer but as I was telling my wife about it I realized that’s kind of how I am. I tend to be very practical in my affection, not so much emotional. It’s my family’s fault really. love has always been shown for me by providing or “doing” for one another. my family was never too big on emotional support and I guess it’s carried over into my relationship with God. So I asked Him if this was ok or if I was wasting my time because my heart was wrong. He reminded me about what He’s been teaching me “that He wants me to love people with the love He deserves.” So long as I am doing that I am fine.

Being the stubborn person I am that wasn’t quite enough. I kept thinking about the scripture where Paul was writing and made some reference about “running in vain” so I had to look it up. The chapter really had nothing to do with Paul being worried about himself rather he was expressing concern for the Philippians and whether or not he had wasted his time bringing the gospel to them. There is however right before that portion of scripture which talks about Christ and His equality with God and how He gave that up to become a man and a servant and in doing that God then exalted His name above every other name. This then inspired me and reminded me that every time the disciples asked Jesus who would be the greatest in the kingdom Jesus would tell them what they had to do to become the greatest. He would actually encourage their ambition. He said to be the greatest you have to be slave to all. So the way I see it... Christ is not concerned about my ambition to “do” for Him as long as I understand that the actions He values are my lifting up others above myself and seeking to serve and benefit them and loving them as I would love Him.

faith... first steps

Lord I repent for my unbelief... my lack of faith which has shown up time and again. Even when I see God working miracles right before my eyes I find that doubt can slip in. Did you know that you can have doubt even as you see a tumor melting away... it’s true. I know this because it’s happened to me... seeing is not believing. Believing is believing; and unfortunately in the Christian faith we must often believe before we are allowed to see.
At some point we must decide what we are going to believe. What will we use to decide what “truth” we will live by? Do we rely on our own knowledge apart from God or do we trust His word and the promises He has given us. Remember that He is all powerful and cannot lie. When we know what it is He has promised and we doubt what He says because of our own understanding we are essentially calling God a liar. We would never directly call God a liar but what else can we call it when we don’t believe what He has said?
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” the word translated “substance” in the greek has the idea of bringing something into being... perhaps a better word would be substantiating. What that scripture is saying is that our faith in what God has promised is what, in fact, brings these promises into our reality. Even better than that it is our faith in what God had said that pleases Him. After all what is the point of being able to move mountains if you are not pleasing God in the process.