Article ‘At the Construction Site’ reposted from ARMYBARMY resource website
A Steadfast love!
Lamentations 3:21-23 (NIV)
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Do you sometimes have trouble recalling the love of God in your life? Are you far from God right now? Are there days when you wonder what God is doing with you? Are you struggling right now?
If the answer is yes and ‘I don’t know’ to these questions let me encourage you today. The inventor of love, the Creator of the Universe thinks that you are special! He thinks that you are worthy of His fellowship! Now when I bring that statement to mind how do you feel? I hope it evokes in you a warmth of love and peace because our Father in Heaven wants us all to know that we matter to Him!
These beautifully written verses tell us that His grace and love are new every morning for us. How awesome is that? No matter how badly we’ve screwed up in the past our God wants to mend and forgive. The only issue that keeps us from receiving these promises of love and compassion…is us. Do you doubt? We cannot allow doubt to replace faith in our lives. Doubt can pull us away from God because we just can’t grasp Him in a tangible sense. But know that He is there and faith is the evidence of things unseen and believing in Him!
Do you stumble and trip in sin? I want to caution you that this life isn’t a game. We are granted grace by God, but that grace isn’t some ‘get out of jail’ card that we flash every time we choose to sin and think callously ‘oh well God will forgive me.’ We have to get serious about our faith, meaning if it is in our power, which it is and God can grant us that power, we must avoid the trappings of temptation all together.
Yes God’s love and compassion are steadfast! These attributes of God are not going anywhere, but we have to wise up and shake up our lives in order to receive them from God! He is spurring us to change our patterns and to accept Him and His renewing grace every day! Will you receive it anew today? He loves us so very much and desires for us to love Him back without strings or conditions attached.
This beautiful passage always strikes a chord in my life and evokes for me a sense of His perfect peace that He offers anew to us each and every day. How awesome is that?!
Have You Forgotten???
Psalm 103:2-6 Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
Do you have trouble remembering what God has done for you? Are you lacking in your confidence that He is actually there for you? Sometimes it’s beneficial to read scripture passages such as Psalm 103 to bring to mind once again in great detail what the Lord has done for all of us. Look at these verse above once more…it says right at the beginning “forget not all his benefits.” The psalmist stresses the need to never forget the things that God has done for us, and then he goes on to list them for us, just in case we’ve indeed forgotten.
What Are the Benefits of God?
1. He forgives ALL your sins!
Not just some of your sins, but all of your sins! Think of it, what God offers to each and everyone one of us is complete and total absolution for our sins. The slate is literally wiped clean! When the slate is wiped clean, we are provided freedom from sin and death. This first benefit is epic in that we can be brought back into a right relationship with the Father. No longer do we have to be bound by the shackles of sin, but instead the binds of bondage are taken from us…we are free indeed!
2. He Heals all your diseases:
Don’t misunderstand here, perhaps we may yet have to endure actual physical health issues or struggles, but ultimate we will one day be complete healed and given new heavenly bodies. But God does in fact still heal His people here on earth. Miracles do still take place and He can provide this blessing of healing to those He deems in need of it…but the problem arises for us when we consider the question, ‘what if He doesn’t choose to heal me?’ When we submit our lives to God we take on a vital component of the Lord’s prayer in action in our lives when we pray, ‘Thy will be done.’
3. (He)… redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion
Because God forgive ALL of our sin we have been saved from eternal punishment and instead have been given the right to be called sons and daughters of God! We have been grafted into the family of God because of Jesus Christ! He stands before us with nail scared hands and wraps His arms around us and showers us with His love! Isn’t that awesome to think about? His love and compassion escorts us into the family and we are able to sit before the Father of all creation because of Jesus and what He’s done for us!
4. (He) “satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s”
Does God provide for you? Is He not the Jehovah Jireh in your life? God have given us all that we need, not all that we want. He provides us with the things that are vital to our lives, but be careful that you don’t mistake wants for needs. God will always give to his children that which we ask for in His name, not ours. Make sure the things we ask for aren’t for any selfish intent or prideful purpose, but rather humbly ask for things which God will grant to benefit his children living His kingdom out here on earth right now! He does satisfy our needs and He will sustain us and renew us within all our energies and motivations.
5. The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
Be assured that those who are oppressed, those who are serving Him through difficult circumstances and facing trials and persecution will one day find justice from those who have wronged them. This isn’t a vindictive statement but a holy truth. God is Lord of all including those who are unrighteous and those who oppress His people. Everyone will one day have to stand before God and take account for their actions here on earth. I know that God will bring His pure and true justice upon us all. I also know that God still works through the oppressed and impacts this world for His glory regardless if man and their kingdoms oppose His message. His will always prevails despite the attempts of the enemy to discourage and dismantle His cause. Know that despite their trials, and even ours that we serve a God who doesn’t fail even if we do. If we are faithful to Him and do what He asks of us, He will provide the victory even if we do not get to see it fulfilled in our life time.
Have you forgotten? Do you lack understanding of what it is exactly that God has done for us? Read this passage again and be encouraged! Understand the God is on your side and wants you to know that He prevails in and through all things! Don’t forget these awesome facts and bring them to mind whenever you feel discouraged or downhearted. May the Lord remind you in your times of trouble that you matter to Him and also what He provides to you still today!
Eye of the Tiger
Ok…cue the music…let’s get it over with.
Perhaps I am showing my age, but I can remember going over to a friend’s house and cranking up his dad’s stereo and singing at the top of my lungs this song “Eye of the tiger”. I associated it with Rocky of course, but to me it spoke to the essence of my own life. It evoked for me a sense of iron determination and if I had that iron determination I could accomplish anything in life! I played soccer at the time and so I imagined myself out dribbling my opponent and scoring the game winning goal all because I had the ‘Eye of the Tiger’.
Still today I occasionally think about that song and even though many years have passed since I was young and screaming its lyrics at my friend’s house, I still get a charge out of it. The song still pumps me up and encourages me to keep on going no matter what obstacles might lay in my way.
In the spiritual realm, many so desperately need to have this ‘Eye of the tiger’ buried within their faith. Unfortunately it is not uncommon for fellow Christians to get so bogged down by burdens and stress and issues that they abandon their faith all together. Sometimes when the going gets tough those that lack the proper endurance fade away or simply abandon the cause all together. How sad it would be to have come so close to grasping the image of Christ in our lives and to just give up when we are spiritually attacked or oppressed.
Do spiritual crisis’ still come to those who are in Christ? You bet they do, in fact sometimes they often increase instead of diminishing. The father of lies, Satan himself, would love to deter us and convince us that this path that we’re on is too hard or impossible to continue. Often times when we see victories for Christ taking place in ministries and in our lives we may face strong spiritual opposition because Satan would love for us to give up and abandon instead of witnessing these victories that God provides.
You and I need the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ in our faith! We cannot be deterred by the slings and arrows that the evil one throws our way. But we must also be careful because, we cannot claim victory by and of our own strength. Our Heavenly Father will supply us our needs and our His strength all we have to do is ask for it and it will be given!
Perseverance is often viewed as keep on keeping on…willful determination in the face of adversity. We too, must keep going no matter what types of discouragement and obstacles we face!
Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
Do not give up! Don’t quit the fight or lose your way! Embrace this strength that comes from God so that we too can be more than conquerors!
“In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:378
Do you have the Eye of the Tiger in you today?
Better yet do you have the Eye of the Lion of Judah in you today? Don’t quit, your battle is not fought alone! You are not engaged in this spiritual war in and of your own strength either, He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion (Phil 1:6)!
Get on with it, stand boldly on your faith and keep on keeping on!
Salt: Flavor & Preserver
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” Matthew 5:13
Did you know that salt is not only a flavoring element within food, but is also a preserver of food? Salt has been one of those ancient ways in which people have used to prevent food from rotting. So when Jesus told those gathered there that they were salt of the earth, he chose a topic with which the people would understand. Still today food is of epic importance to our survival as people. We can last for a long time without it, but food nourishes us, sustains us and provides us with the appropriate vitamins and nutrients. Without those vital components in life, we will eventually perish.
Jesus brought his message home to those who would listen that this world is perishing. All things have an expiration date…yet what will preserve us? What will make us last a little longer? What will inject much needed flavor into our world? The answer is simply those who will follow after God’s own heart!
This world will eventually pass away, and sometimes we may think it may be in our life time when we see unspeakable horrors and violence, humans turning on other humans, death and destruction…our world is a violent place. Yet, the preserving element of life is God who is the author and sustainer of all things. When we align our hearts, body and soul to Him, we find that the outpouring of this faith is love, peace, hope and joy…something this world desperately needs more of!
When we display love without strings attached, a joy without ulterior motives other than for others to find this same joy as well, we will inject our worlds with just a little bit of God’s epic flavor.
So how about it? Are you prepared to be God’s preservationist? Are you prepared to offer a dying world hope in the eternal one? Being salt to a flavorless and empty world is what we ought to strive for!
Another interesting notion in this passage of scripture for us to grasp is that typically all of the salt that was utilized in Israel at the time of Jesus was brought up from the Dead sea, which as you may know is extremely salty. But there is also something else about the salt content of the Dead sea that you may not know. The salt deposits within this body of water is full of impurities and often, after time, will lose its flavor.
Jesus instructed, perhaps even pleaded with this audience that we should never lose our flavor. If we are to provide a flavorless world with the undaunted grace and richness of God then we must be mindful to always draw from His source of power and might. Because if we stop drawing from Him and instead begin to rely on our own merits and flavor, we will lose the very essence of His character and love to a world so desperate to find hope.
Be flavor and a preserver to this world through the power of the One who sent us out into it! Never let this hope diminish or lose its flavor!
Becoming Gollum
“For where your treasure is, there your heart is also” Matthew 6:21
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novels “Lord of the Rings” we meet a curious creature named Gollum. He’s a vile creature and yet something to be pitied as the sorcerer Gandalf has said. Gollum is obsessed with The Ring. He even calls it his “precious”. Yet we catch just a short glimpse of what Gollum looked like before he turned into this vile, repugnant creature. He too was a Hobbit from some shire, and he too had friends and family. Then the ring captures his attention one day as he mistakenly discovers it and he kills one of his own to claim it for himself…Gollum is born.
He was never supposed to be this way. He wasn’t created to live out his days in total and complete subjugation to this evil that is the ring, yet he is a slave to it, and a direct result of his slavery is this ugly transformation into a despised and tortured creature.
We’re all Gollum. Every single one of us has been bound by sin and subjected to enslavement to our “precious”. Since the fall of man, when Adam and Eve broke God’s heart in the garden of Eden, try as we might we couldn’t break our obsession with sin…and so sin transformed us. We were at one time created in the very image of God, but because of sin that image is now marred within us…there is still some resemblance but it’s faded.
What is our ‘precious’…is it an obsession with stuff? Could our ‘precious’ be relationships? How about money, or our jobs, or our kids…there are many, many things with which sin enslaves. Whatever consumes most of our time, whatever we think about incessantly becomes our god. What is your god?
Our Heavenly Father has, since the fall of man, attempted to bridge this void that is sin between us. We have all fallen and so Christ became our bridge, through His sacrifice on the cross, between us and God. Christ has taken ‘the ring’ from our possessions, died for us so that our resemblance to God could be restored. What love to have taken our place! He knew we couldn’t save ourselves and so He came to our level and took upon himself our enslavement…and it didn’t end there. He was strong enough to conquer sin and death and open the doors of heaven for us.
We are all Gollum…but we don’t have to remain that way any longer! We can be free! If you have been set free by Christ, what’s stopping you from sharing this with others who are still captured in their enslavements? This good news must be shared to help set the captives free!
We don’t’ have to be fallen and rejected any longer! We can be transformed and renewed by the grace of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ. Will you let go of your ‘precious’ and give Him a try? If you do, you will find yourself set free indeed!
Give us today our daily bread
Do you know where your next meal is coming from? Do you wonder how your next month’s rent or car payment or other bill is going to get paid? Our basic essentials in life obviously come because we can pay for things…right? What we make at our jobs generally helps to pay for our lifestyles. Sometimes, though we realize that we have not been living within our means when we run up a credit card or lease/buy a vehicle that we cannot afford the payments on. Living within our means forces us to realize that we ought to separate our needs from our wants.
When we pray to our Father in heaven the way Jesus has instructed us in what we call “the Lord’s prayer” what we realize is that we are placing our entire being, fully surrendered, at the foot of God himself. When we pray “give us today our daily bread” we are not praying for tomorrow’s supplies or tomorrow’s worries, we are strictly and implicitly focusing on what is right before us within this very day. Who knows what tomorrow holds, but when we focus on God, his might and power and his kingdom, we can’t but help realize that He is ultimately in control over our basic needs.
When we pray this portion of ‘the Lord’s prayer’ we quickly realize that it’s not our wants that He will supply but our needs. What is it that you need today? What do you struggle with daily? Have you prayed about it? Is it really a need or is it a want? “Daily bread” isn’t necessarily the food that we eat but every human supply of our needs is included here. God is supremely over all and through all! When we come to this conclusion even the little things in life are blessings given to us by God and we ought to thank Him for these daily…even moment by moment.
Do you have needs? Are you lacking today? Have you prayed about it? Are you surrendering it all to your Father in Heaven? Consider the works of His hands today and consider how blessed we are because He can and will provide for us the things that we need.
Evolutionary Environmentalist…
(Art Created by Vik Muniz…he created these photos and art at the land fill outside Rio)
I saw a convicting documentary last night it was called “Waste Land” and it was about the world’s largest landfill located just outside of Rio De Janeiro Brazil. Two things occurred when I saw this film, humanity and the slum conditions of this lower class people in Brazil struck me as horrific and surreal…it was a visceral experience.
The second thing that struck me was the global waste problem we are causing. From these waste mountains, for that is what they truly are, toxic gases occur, toxic run off takes place, health of both man and beast takes place and we are continually polluting our world through these unsafe practices.
The amazing journey of world renown Brazilian artist and photographer Vik Muniz inspired me in my attempts to leave a cleaner world than I found it. I’m not by any means a ‘tree-hugger’ type of environmentalist but God did place man in charge of this world to take care of it…and we are not doing a very good job.
Unfortunately corporate greed and cutting costs world-wide is an epidemic that lines the pockets of the very rich and creates continued poor health conditions for not only for those working in land fills such as that in Brazil but for factory workers like those who lost their lives in Bangladesh recently because labor laws are virtually non-existent in most third world countries.
Here are three things we all can do to support a cleaner world for all of us:
1) Purchase items sold via fair-trade and the fair-trade labels:
http://www.fairtradeusa.org/?gclid=CP6rr5vBpbcCFc9FMgodbgQAnQ
https://www.salvationist.org/poverty.nsf/vw_features/43BA11AAAE7E76CE80256B04004FA663
This gives local farmers and regional workers who get undercut by large companies and corporate markets a fair shot at selling their good products…thereby being able to feed their families and support their local areas of commerce.
2) Spend a little more on ‘clean’ earth friendly products. You might spend a few cents more, but in the long run generations will thank you and you will contribute less waste and/or toxic chemicals in our global environment. Most of these products are also safer for kids and are also less harmful in the long term in regards to all of our health.
Read though, study what is actually earth/environmentally friendly…some companies are producing ‘like’ products to entice consumers to purchase their goods when in fact they are still harmful and/or toxic, they just dressed it up to look the part. Study and buy correctly!
3) Recycle! Reuse and reduce…it may be a pain in the butt…it may take you a little longer to dispose of your waste…but consider the long term effects. Consider how much of a difference you are making on the world around you! If you recycle and you are conscience of things that you use every day you can contribute and help fulfill our roles as good stewards of this world that God has entrusted us with.
-Just a thought…From a non-green tree-hugger, but one who is quite conscious of how beautiful our world is and how God intended it to be. I guess that’s the evolutionary process of this compassionate conservative environmentalist…btw…thanks go out to my loving wife who has continually reminded me of this important role that we ought to play here on earth.
“Walk in the Light” Sermon Podcast
Click on this link for Sermon Podcast: Walk in the Light (Sermon Podcast)
1 John 2:1-6 (NIV)
1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense–Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4 The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
RSVP: Reserve Space for Victory in Paradise!
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David… Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near…You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:1-3,6,12)
What do you do when you are invited to a party? You send the RSVP or call in your RSVP and you confirm (if schedule allows) that you will attend. Your response is required so that the party host will know who will attend and how many to plan for. It’s not only polite to return your RSVP, it is an important response and action on your part…in essence you are saying “I will be there!”
In the above passage of Isaiah, the invitations for forgiveness have been sent out by God. He wants to make what was broken whole again. The prophecy of Messiah (Jesus) is evident in two key verses two chapters back:
Isaiah 52:13 “See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.” &
Isaiah 53:12 “Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
Forgiveness is at hand, the RSVP has been hand delivered to all of us, and the Host of this Redemptive party is awaiting our response. The most telling portion of chapter 55 in Isaiah is verse 6…it says “Seek the Lord while he may be found...” It is a frightening proposition here because He seems to be saying to us, ‘make up your minds while you can.’ The implication is that our RSVP has an expiration date and we ought not postpone our response.
Forgiveness and redemption is ours, the Host of Heaven stands at the front door inviting us in…what will your response be? Either we enter and accept His love and forgiveness or we don’t because soon that door will be closed…soon we will all be standing before Him, and in contrast, probably the most frightening passage in all of scripture is Matthew 25:31-46 when Jesus himself states clearly that the day is coming when the King will separate the sheep from goats and He will say to the goats (those who have not accepted His invitation to forgiveness and redemption) “‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'” (Matthew 25:41)
We have this contrast of those who will accept the invitation and those who will not. Yet there is hope…there is time, but if you haven’t accepted the invitation, don’t let this time slip away. Redemption draws near, your RSVP is requested…what will your answer be?
Pastor's Ponderings 