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Tag: Christian

  • Follow After Me – a series on Christian life in the 21st c.

    Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

    – Matthew 16:24

    Who do you follow?

    It seems in this 21st century that following Jesus is NOT the thing to do. Worshiping GOD seems to be a thing of the past. Tolerance for other religions (even those with no tolerance for our beliefs) seems to be an inviolable standard for a post-modern morality without standards. Christianity is on the outs.

    Those living in a European Union of atheist existence no longer challenge the communist for their opposition to God, but for their competition to our greed. Suppressed peoples of Africa, Asia and the Middle East are ignored for their needs, yet exploited for their resources.

    In the United States, a nation founded after a great awakening to the glory of God and hope in Jesus Christ, freedom of speech has digressed into irresponsible sound bites. And in a post-Christian U.S., religion in our former nation under God, has fallen into a frenzy of preservation of a lost way of life. We are no longer a safe haven for the tired, the poor and huddled masses. Even the language of future leaders would gamble on a ban of immigrants.

    Who in this world would you follow?

    A strong dictator with guns and oil and young men who will die for him? A billionaire who would buy the Presidency of a powerful nation? A robed Arab prince who beheads Christians? Perhaps an autocratic zealous religious leader of a long-gone false and violent prophet? Who would you trust with your life and your family?

    Who would you follow today?  Who would you trust with your present and your future, even sins of your past and hope for your eternity?

    Jesus Christ,

    a Savior for every century, a Redeemer for every sinner

    You probably don’t live in Israel. You are not likely the owner of a fishing fleet or dishonest tax collector. I know you don’t imagine that a dozen poor men, a few hundred common and poor Jews and women with no stake in a Roman district on the Mediterranean 21 centuries ago have anything in common with you.

    In fact, if you believe in God; in fact, if you believe in Christ Jesus; in fact, if you live in this day as a follower of the Way of Jesus you don’t have much in common with those who compete with you in the workplace and challenge you in your everyday 21st century life.

    You may only be looking for some answers to a life that matters – your life, even the souls of those you love. Where do you look? Who do you trust?

    Who would you learn from? Whose example would you follow? After all, you and I are sinners – failed sinners in a fallen world which digresses quickly toward the destruction of all we value.

    Why Jesus? Why do the words of the Gospel, the Good News of the Messiah of God coming to mankind, resonate with us?

    Read the story of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man of 21 centuries ago, who IS raised from the dead and rules over powers and principalities we cannot understand and you will see that He is the only man in history who IS exactly who He says He IS.

    Jesus Christ IS God Incarnate!

    He came to mankind in love for the cost of our sins. He came to save us from death and punishment. He will come again in judgment of those who have hated God and their fellow man. Jesus came to the world to establish His Kingdom in love. The LORD GOD, who has called for us to follow after Him in word and in deed, will celebrate the glory of His creation for all eternity in the fellowship of those who love and worship Him.

    Challenges of a 21st c. Christian life

    This NEW series will address our challenges of living as followers of Jesus Christ in a world of selfishness and obeying God in a world corrupted by godlessness. At any time in these last times, following Jesus in the footsteps of love through the darkness of days seems difficult at best.

    The Name of Jesus and glory of God are maligned by the headlines of hateful souls and agendas of prideful sinners.

    Yet read the Bible: understand the Law of God, praise the glory of the LORD, hear the writing on the walls, experience the hope of the Gospel, embrace the letters of love and heed the revelation of God’s will. Know the beginning and the end. See that the LORD has come to you and to me, because we are sinners in need of a Savior.

    I pray that the encouragement of this series might help you to see yourself as a fellow sinner who would like to flee this world, yet by our witness to the light of eternal hope we choose to listen to the Son of Man, Christ Jesus, who calls out to each of us:

    “Follow after me.”

    To be continued…

    NEXT: Hope for the Guilty

  • Mission 3 – Who?

    Mission 3 – Who?

    Whatever your mission, whatever the corporate mission of your church: People are more important than things.

    Our mission is not so much what we do or where we go, as it is who we do it for.

    My personal mission, your personal mission and the corporate mission of our churches must minimally include two VIP’s:

    1. THE LORD GOD
    2.  Each person we serve.

    Your mission may have a long laundry list of things to do and places to do them, but ultimately our mission is to go to another in the Name of God and Jesus Christ, to accomplish the mission of the LORD in the life of another.

    Much ado is rightfully made about the great commission. Christ Jesus IS! He alone defeated sin and death. Christ sent His Apostles into ‘all the world’ to preach the Gospel and indeed they went out from Jerusalem into other lands.

    Jesus commands us to take the gospel into the world; however before Jesus and His Disciples went into the world, they first saturated the world nearby and the people they knew and loved with the good news: Our salvation is come in Jesus Christ.

    Repent! for the kingdom of God is at hand. Worship the LORD. God is our loving Father. Your sins are forgiven.

    Matthew 4: English Standard Version (ESV)

    Jesus Ministers to Great Crowds

    23 And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

    IF you and I were to take the Gospel into all the world in the fashion of Jesus’ three-year earthly ministry, we would start at home. Galilee was Jesus’ home state. He was known by others in relation to his home town; for many called our Lord, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’

    • Does your mission to those in your home town and local community show you living a life like Jesus?
    • Is your life good news to your family, your neighbors, your friends?
    • Is your righteousness in Christ Jesus good news of love and forgiveness?
    • Do you dare call your fellow sinners to repentance?
    • Is your daily life an invitation to others to live a godly life like yours?
    • Does your life preach the Gospel throughout all the places you travel in your state and in the world?

    Jesus lived, breathed and walked as ‘GOD in the flesh.’

    GOD did not send Jesus Christ on a mission of miracles, but on a mission to heal sin and save sinners.

    As Jesus taught scripture He demonstrated the saving power of the Word of God. Prior to His death and resurrection Jesus showed us how to be changed in our daily lives. Jesus showed Christians how to love one another as God truly loves us.

    GOD loves us Personally, in the incarnate Person of the Son, Christ Jesus.

    We have many examples in the four Gospels of how Jesus Christ spread the Good News. Jesus repeatedly set aside the ‘TO DO list’ of His brief journeys to be the Good News for individuals personally.

    To the LORD, people are more important than things.

    The NIT’s (Not Important Things) of our “Mission” seem to steal mortal time from the VIP’S (Very Important People) of our lives.

    Jesus Christ has a mission to take the Gospel into the whole world. Our Lord’s mission always takes time for the VIP’s God would save from sin and death.

    Do you have time for these in the mission of your life?

    In our next series [August, 2015] we will examine the Mission of Jesus in the Gospels and look to His example of how our Lord took time to interrupt His Mission to minister to the VIP’s to whom He is sent.

  • And you, who once were alienated

    And you, who once were alienated

    Colossians 1: NKJV 21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled 22 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—

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    Jesus Christ! Friend or foe?

    No other Name evokes such controversy and alienation: not Muhammad, not Buddha, not Obama, not Putin. The world, your workplace, our government: all oppose any suggestion that Christ Jesus IS Lord; that the Lord will judge sinners, that we are created once to die once, to be raised to the judgment and accountability for our sins against our fellow man and enmity against God.

    Wicked works of our daily lives, evil ideas conceived for our advantage over others, evil efforts to bring pleasure at the expense of others – all are rebellious against ANY man or ANY god being Lord over us.

    We must be in charge of our own destiny.  And so we are; for we have choice between the passions of these evil days, with eternal punishment after death, or accepting Jesus Christ as Lord to serve God in exchange for His righteousness leading to eternal life by His grace.

    Before the Lord mercifully called you to peace of your soul and invitation to worship in the body of believers, were you not indignant that Jesus could command you to NOT do those things you have always done, that Jesus could command you to action of love when you would easily ignore the need of another?

    How wicked are our works and deceitful our hearts. Yet by grace we are saved to His love, the love of Christ Jesus in place of the things of this perishing world and pursuits of this decaying flesh.

    Psalm 36

    How Precious Is Your Steadfast Love

    To the choirmaster. Of David, the servant of the Lord.

     Transgression [rebellion] speaks to the wicked
        deep in his heart;
    there is no fear of God
        before his eyes.
    2 For he flatters himself in his own eyes
        that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
    3 The words of his mouth are trouble [iniquity] and deceit;
        he has ceased to act wisely and do good.
    4 He plots trouble while on his bed;
        he sets himself in a way that is not good;
        he does not reject evil.

    5 Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
        your faithfulness to the clouds.

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    By contrast to our evil, sinful nature, the Lord is good, full of steadfast love. The Lord is faithful, but we are not.

    The NKJV [v.4] says of the wicked: He does not abhor evil. Christians know this to be true of all who surround us in our workplace, where we dine, shop, and are entertained in spectator sports or even casual observation of those all around us. Do you abhor evil? Or has the world convinced you to ‘tolerate’ evil, even in the holy worship place and communion of our Lord?

    Do not hate evil with hatred, but abhor evil with the love of Jesus which also called you to repentance for your sins.

    And lest we paint ourselves into a sanctuary of perceived righteousness apart from Christ, let us recall with humility the mercy God has already shown us, miserable sinners in His sight.

    Romans 2

    Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. 2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. 3 Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

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    Do you rant and rail against abortion, bold christian, while condoning your teens having intercourse before marriage?

    Do you shout out about marriage between one man and one woman, while divorcing your Christian husband or wife to whom you have made your vows before God?

    Our righteousness is only in Christ Jesus. If He is our Lord, our Lord commands us to be merciful to others, as He has shown us much mercy. Surly our Lord requires continued patience with you and with me, grace for the reshaping of our repentant hearts into the clay of His love.

    The witness of Christ, passed on in truth and in love by His Apostles continues in all the generations until the Lord returns again. Paul and Timothy write in their letter to the church at Colossae:

    Colossians 1: ESV [NKJV]

    3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven…

    13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

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    Paul writes to the church of the transformation which takes place that makes believers in Christ Jesus different from the world. The Apostle Paul cautions continued faithfulness in believers, that we might not fall back into our former sinful and wicked ways so evident in those worldly enemies of Christ around us.

    [NKJV] 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.

    For how did Paul precede this caution? With the contrast of our redeemed life in Christ Jesus.

    21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled 22 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—

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    Do not fail to show mercy to others nor to remember the grace by which we were saved.