One In Christ

John 17:22-23

One In Christ

     “And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.”

     What does it mean to be one with Jesus and our Heavenly Father? Let us consider what it would be like if you went to grab a glass of water and your hand picks up the spoon next to it. Your hand has disregarded your body’s desire for a drink and decided it liked the feel of holding a spoon. This is kind of a funny illustration but we have been called the body of Christ and He is our head. For us to work as one body the head of the body must direct the rest for the good of the entire body. To be one in Christ is to be of the same mind, heart, and action with Him. His desire is our delight to carry out. Everything we do affects the entire body of Christ and when we are stubbornly set in our earthly pursuits, refusing to let go, it can have consequences that can take a long time to recover from.

     We need to look more closely at what this signifies in terms of the unity Jesus has said we are to have with our brothers and sisters. The comfort of the entire body is dramatically altered when all of its members are working together under the leadership of the head. Caring for one another, bearing with one another’s faults, and forgiving one another, is the muscle and tissue that keeps us together. Having hearts set on helping one another everyday should be an active thing rather than waiting for something bad to befall a neighbor before we feel any kind of need to help them. Our love and concern should not be cause and affect but continuous. 

     This is significant because it pulls us out of ourselves and into a life of service and blessing to everyone around us. If we let it, everyday will consume us with pursuits for our own gain, and concern for our neighbors, family, and friends will be forgotten. It is so easy to get caught up in these things that we don’t even notice. To be one with Jesus is to be filled with His love for everyone around us and to find ways to help them. To be one with Him is to seek His plan for our lives so that we can be doing the job that will most benefit the body of Christ. To be one with Him is to be filled with the joy of serving Him and seeing Him work through our lives.

     So I want to encourage all of you today to earnestly seek His plan for your life. It can be hard to lay down your earthly ambitions in order to do this but only someone who is truly willing to do whatever God’s plan is will receive His plan for their lives and carry it out. You cannot want your own plan and His because invariably your plan will hinder the effectiveness of His plan and the two will get in the way of each other. We cannot be divided when we serve God, but must serve Him with our whole heart. When we have committed all our heart and all our life to Him, His joy and excitement will come pouring into us to the point where we cannot even contain it.
    God desires to fill your life with excitement and the most amazing adventure, but it requires counting the cost of what you are going to let go of. His plan for your life will fill the rest of your life. It is all or nothing and will not be joyful and exciting unless you have committed everything to Him.
     So let us renew our commitment to Him and serve one another joyfully. Encouraging one another and spurring one another on to greater works in Christ!           God bless you all!

The Testimony Of A Christian

John 17: 3

The Testimony Of A Christian

1. John 17:3 “And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

2. John 17:18 “As Thou didst send Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.”

3. John 17:21 “That they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they may also be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.”

4. & 5. John 17:22-23 “And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.”

6. John 17:25-26 “Oh righteous Father, although the world has not known Thee, yet I have known Thee; and these have known that Thou didst send Me; and I have made Thy name known to them, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou didst love Me may be in them, and I in them.”

     We are to be living proof that God is the only true God, and that He sent Jesus Christ to save us and to give us eternal life. Jesus says that eternal life is knowing God, and believing in Him, and His Son Jesus, whom the Father sent to us. If we are to be witnesses and the living proof that Jesus is Lord of all, then how are we to do this? There is nothing supernatural about us; we do not stand out or show God’s glory in ourselves. In point (3.) Jesus requests of God that we be made one with Him, and with Jesus, that we might truly know the Love that the Father has for us and be able to share it with the world.

     It is time for us to ask for help. It is time to pray for Jesus to take His rightful place in the center of our lives, as He did when we were first saved. Too many things are trying to steal our hearts away from Him, and we lose our connection to His life-giving presence. It is time to pray for a revival in our hearts, that we might be centered on Jesus. When He is the center of our desire, we will bear an overflowing testimony of His sovereignty in our lives. 

     In points (4 & 5) Jesus tells His Father that He has granted to us the glory that God has granted to Him that we might be one in Himself. What is that glory which He has passed on to us? The glory is unity with God. Jesus, having removed the barrier of sin from between us and God, has given us complete access to the thrown of God and to the wonderful works of God through prayer. We are open vessels able to convey the glorious truths of God. Again, what is that glorious truth? It is the reality that He is the only true God and that He has sent His beloved Son Jesus to us to be our Savior.

     Point (6) The world, having lost its ability through sin to be able to see God and to know Him, was in need of a witness. Jesus was sent to be the mouth of God and to bring the light of God’s word to mankind. I think this is an amazing picture. A world in darkness which could no longer see the glory of God is given the light of Jesus Christ and yet if God did not open the eyes of the people still no one would be able to see His glory. What kind of darkness is it that we are dealing with here on earth? If Jesus was invisible even to those who were teaching the laws of God, this is a deep, spiritual darkness. This is why Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to open our eyes to the brilliant light of Christ. We too, can expect an impossible task of bringing the Gospel of Christ to people if we do not have the blessing of God’s Holy Spirit with us to open their eyes. We must pray earnestly for the awakening touch of the Holy Spirit on those with whom we share the Gospel. The world cannot see the truth even if Jesus Himself were here in person to present it. Jesus relied on God to send the Holy Spirit to awaken the hearts and minds of the people and to be a witness to the truth of what He taught.

     Therefore – eternal life is – That we may know God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent.

Jesus Has Overcome The World

John 16: 31-33

Jesus Has Overcome The World

     Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

     The question for today is, “Have you been scattered”? Have you been holding on to Jesus as your Savior and support and yet your confidence has been shaken because of the great trials that have come upon you, and you have asked – Where are you Jesus in my hour of need? Have the trials been so great that you have fled for your life in despair that not even God could save you from them anymore? Jesus’ words are as much for us today as they were for His disciples. Jesus was about to be publicly executed which He knew would greatly weaken their belief and confidence that He was indeed the promised Messiah for whom they had forsaken their earthly comforts and homes to follow. The disciples had given up everything in this world to follow Him and suddenly their trust and faith was going to be tested. Jesus promises them that He will be their peace in the midst of the trial and that though there was going to be tribulation, He had overcome it.

     Why does Jesus’ “overcoming of the world” give us courage? What did this mean for them and what does it mean for us? Jesus’ words were His confirmation that He had not bowed to any of the temptations and that He was about to give the final blow to the hold that sin had upon their lives. His last great battle was about to be won in which the devil’s power over us would be crushed once and for all, opening the door to the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit upon all who believed in Him and forever changing the world. Jesus was clearing the road that led to our Heavenly Father that we might be reunited with Him and become a new creation. Jesus was not saying that they would have no more tribulation on earth, but that He had purchased the peace of pardon so that our souls would no longer be at war with God, but full of His Life and Power. Jesus is telling them that He was going to be victorious in spite of their inability to stand up in the midst of the trial.

     So what does this mean for us? Jesus’ words, “Take courage, for I have overcome the world” are for us in the same way, that though the trial may have caused us to lose our confidence in Him, yet He will be faithful to rescue us anyway. He is with us even when we have forsaken Him because of our doubts and fears and He will complete the good work He has started in us because He loves us and has already overcome the world on our behalf.

     So take courage my brothers and sisters – in this world you will have tribulation that will cause you to stumble in your faith, but God will surely rescue you for He loves you and has overcome the world for you that you might be with Him forever! 

     God bless you all!

Christ Glorified In The Life Of A Christian

John 16:13-14

Christ Glorified In The Life Of A Christian

     “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.”- Jesus

     Jesus has sent His Holy Spirit to be our teacher and to open our eyes to the scripture. He desires to reveal all that God has for us, both here on earth and also in eternity. Jesus says that whatever the Holy Spirit hears from God He will pass along to us. The Holy Spirit is our direct connection with God and our greatest companion. Not only will He instruct us but He will also glorify Jesus physically as well. In Mark 16: 17-18 Jesus gives us some pretty astounding promises of what the Holy Spirit will do. “And these signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it shall not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” These are some very physical manifestations of the power of God that He says will accompany all who have believed and follow Him. In Matthew 10:8 Jesus describes how He views these gifts. “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons; freely you have received, freely give.” Jesus considers the gifts He has promised us to be freely used for the benefit of others. They are a free gift to us and therefore we should not hold onto this blessing but freely give it to others. These things are not mysterious happenings; they are a gift to be shared.

     The Holy Spirit wants to move with might and power in our lives and He does not desire to be some mystical religious force, but to be our instructor, teacher, and companion in bringing forth and spreading the glory of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The reason I am dwelling on these things is because Jesus wants us to walk victoriously in His name, not being afraid to speak up for Him, and continually benefiting from all He is truly able to do in our lives. He wants to give us complete victory over every sin and at the same time, fill our minds with the wisdom and beauty of God. He wants to show us new things about God’s creation every day that will only feed our growing desire to learn more, and at the same time, to pour out His compassion on the blind, lame and weak of this world.

     Jesus wants to affect our lives as never before, but we must lay down our lives to follow Him. We cannot pick up this new life He offers us while hanging onto our old lives. The two cannot mix. One is based on selfish desires and pride while the other is the life of a servant, full of compassion for others and demonstating a sweet, Godly humility. Jesus’ love can only come forth from a humble heart. So let us humbly seek the Lord that we might let go of the world each day and serve Him with our whole heart that the Holy Spirit might be free to glorify Jesus in our lives.

Encouragement In Bearing Fruit

John 15:16-17

Encouragement In Bearing Fruit

     “You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.” -Jesus

     I really want to encourage everyone this week that God will bless every action and every prayer that you make on behalf of your family, your neighbor, or your friend. He will bless your efforts to draw them into the Kingdom of God. Jesus says that He has appointed us to bear fruit and that the fruit will remain. He is encouraging us to earnestly ask for their salvation and to step out in faith that He will answer. Every little seed of truth that you sow into their lives will come up and bear fruit. I know that we all get discouraged when after years of praying for someone we don’t see any changes in their life. We have an enemy that wants you to give up in your prayers for that person and he will do anything he can to discourage you from praying with your whole heart, for he knows that God will answer if you persist.

     This is a great word of encouragement for those of us who have been asking the Lord for years on behalf of others and going out of our way to draw them into God’s kingdom. It seems like we can go forever and still see no good coming from it. But let us look at the example that Jesus has left us with. When He hung on the cross all of His disciples had deserted Him and the Jews whom He had tenderly cared for and ministered to were crucifying Him. There was no earthly hope of seeing any good fruit from all of His work. He was staring at a total loss even of His own body and yet, the day He died, all of the seeds He had planted started to come to life! His church grows bigger by the day and there will be no end to the fruit for which He has labored. So for us – we need to take courage from this example He has left us with, and not despair or let go of our prayers for people or stop going out of our way to draw them to God even when we see no fruit. Jesus has promised that there will be fruit!

     So let us step out and start thinking of what kind of seeds we can be planting. There are seeds of action like visiting neighbors or nursing homes or going out into our local communities and helping out. We could be writing letters to friends and family in which we share the love of God with them. We can hand out tracts or join a group that is spreading the Gospel in our communities. I just want to encourage you that anything you can come up with to do for someone, will grow and bear fruit. So let us seek God earnestly today that He will give us new ideas for what we can be doing to spread His kingdom so that we will have fruit for our labors at the end of this age and that the fruit will remain for all of eternity.           God bless you all!

The Joy Of Christ

John 15: 9-11
The Joy Of Christ

     “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”- Jesus

     The question for today is, why does Jesus say that we are to keep His commandments in order to abide in His love? What is the love He is talking about? Jesus gives us a point of reference when He says, “I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” This love that Jesus is telling us to abide in is our source for being alive. It is the kind of life, bubbling up inside, that causes us to be excited to be alive. Jesus says that if we keep His commandments our joy is going to be made full. He equates keeping His commandments with abiding in His love.

     We have a funny teaching in our churches called – “God knows we will never be perfect in this life.” Yes it is true that we stumble and sin all the time but it is not an excuse to not commit ourselves to trying. Jesus says to resist the Devil’s temptations and he will flee from us. All besetting sins are temptations and within our power to resist by God’s help. God doesn’t want us to use the excuse that we will never be perfect. He is pleased with us when we resist, and the harder it is to resist the more pleased He is when we overcome it. It delights His heart to see the faithfulness of His child to persevere under such challenges. 

     When we resist the temptation to break the commandments there is a purity that comes into our lives, and with each passing day that we hold fast, our lives start to get more exciting. Think of an alcoholic. Everyday that he doesn’t drink he is able to think and work and get his life back together. Everyday builds on the last and his life becomes exciting. But if he is constantly falling back into drinking he is always starting from square one with nothing to build on. So our lives become more exciting the more we build them on keeping the commandments. God has built a great reward into each of His commandments if we keep them, an eternal reward with promises like He gave to Abraham that will last forever. We serve a God Who has great wisdom which He desires to pass on to us, but it is a wisdom that can only build off of obedience. I used to pray for wisdom all the time (I still do) and God would teach me many things, but His wisdom always affected my life, causing me to have to change the way I lived and I used to think – wisdom is only as good as it is made use of. If God teaches you something and you don’t use it, it does you no good and He is not going to give you more until you use what He has given you already. Keeping the commandments is the foundation stone to all wisdom. If we keep them our joy will be made full because we won’t always be starting from square one but will be building on those principles that bring peace and order in our lives so that we can learn new things.

     There is no fun in learning the same lessons over and over again and as we keep the commandments we will abide closer with Jesus, ever growing in His character and love. The Ten Commandments are like sight to the blind, they give understanding as to why our lives keep falling into trouble and they show us the path we should walk on in order to keep from doing it again. The commandments were given for our blessing, so let us meditate upon them and live in the fullness of joy that Jesus has promised for all those who would walk in them.         God bless!

Number Your Days

Psalm 90:12

Number Your Days

So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Today, take a moment to examine your life. Where are you going? What are your goals? What is the end result of the life you are trying to build for yourself? Are you happy? Have you ever been happy? Do you think the next thing you are seeking is going to make you happy? These are very good questions to ask ourselves and in doing so we will begin to draw conclusions about things that we have rarely stopped to think seriously about and learn from.

The word in this Psalm is asking these questions. He says, teach me to know and understand that my time might be very short and how am I spending it? It also may be long, and how am I spending it? It may be long?? Why would that help me think? I thought that life being short is the scary part because I might die before getting my life right with God or without accomplishing something good for Him? Yes, your life might be long. Why is this scary? It is scary because it means that every decision you make will have long consequences for you. So when you wake up after a party where in the moment you chose to do a reckless thing, you find that you can’t shake the consequences. Or if you had an abortion your life goes on and now you find out everything they don’t tell you at the clinic. Regret, guilt, the feeling of having actually committed murder intentionally. Did you know that most of the people in jail will never have the regret that you do or the intense guilt because their crimes were relatively harmless compared to yours. Most of them have actually never killed a person before and if they did, they usually have a motive against someone for something they did to them, but you have chosen to kill someone who never harmed you. These things will stay with you forever. So if you live for the moment as though life is short, you will find that life is long and every day that goes by feels like a lifetime.

We now realize that if we had known that life would go on we would never have done the things we did. We would have considered our days that we might have chosen more wisely. This despair and guilt is why so many people want to end their lives early. The consequences of their actions won’t leave them. They just go on and on. There are so many things we can do that have horrible consequences. These are just a couple, but I’m sure you can think of more. They make life miserable don’t they? 

Here is the miracle. Jesus has offered us a way out. He has offered to take the pain, guilt, despair and suicidal thoughts from us and to replace them with peace,  joy and rest for our weary heart. This is the miracle of salvation. He takes our destroyed lives and begins to rebuild them. He takes away the spirit of despair we are under and gives us a new joy and a reason to wake up in the morning. Those who have received Christ know exactly what I’m talking about. You wake up in the morning and your just actually glad to be alive! Nothing outward has changed. Your life is still full of the consequences of your actions but suddenly the weight is gone and your glad to get up! Maybe for the first time that you can ever remember! This is just the beginning! Jesus will give you a desire to live, and a joy to begin living for Him. He will reshape your life and turn the worst things you have done into something beautiful. He will take the humility of your heart as you give it to Him and grow something new and beautiful out of it. He will save you from your despair and give you a joy that you never knew was possible.

So for all of you who have never experienced this, take some time to consider and remember your days. Jesus can make you brand new today if you humbly come before Him right now and say, “Jesus, please take away my old life and all its horrible consequences, please forgive me and give me a new one that is full of Your joy and peace. I want this joy that I have just been reading about. Please make me a new person in Jesus.” If you take some time and do this, I guarantee your life will never be the same.

And for all who know Jesus, take some time to consider your days. Don’t waste time on things that only please the flesh. Consider how little time you have before Jesus returns and seek to do all you can for His sheep before He comes. Let us be found faithful when He come back, that He would be able to say to us, “Well done My good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master.”