Real: Becoming a 24/7 Follower of Jesus

I just finished reading the book Real by Pastor Jamie Snyder. He starts his book by asking the reader to ask him or herself, “Would people know I’m a Christian if they didn’t see me at church?”

What I especially liked about the book was, he told us that living like a Christian is living the way Jesus did. That He is our example. And Snyder shared some of the things Jesus did on a day by day basis and suggested how we can do those things too.

One I really took to heart was that Jesus shared the Good News. And that Good News wasn’t just the gospel which means “good news”; He was the good news to people! He shared Himself! He fed the hungry, took care of the poor, restored dignity to the marginalized people in the society and cast out evil spirits. Snyder wrote, “Following Jesus is not so much about following Him in the directional sense, like east or west on a path, but more about getting wrapped up in the things He is wrapped up in. So following Jesus is less to do with whether you go here, there, or somewhere else, and more about being good news to people here, there, or somewhere else.”

The book challenged me to “be good news” to people. To infuse hope and joy and peace and patience and kindness and self-control and love into the daily circumstances of this world. To be the kind of person people go to for encouragement, knowing they won’t be judged or scolded. To have people leave my presence a little less anxious.

These are the kinds of things this book gets you to think about!

Disclosure: I was given this book by Bethany House to review on my blog. They did not ask for a positive review; only an honest one.

Becoming Like Christ

You might know so much about the Bible, but at the end of the day, do your actions make people say, "Being with you is like what being with Jesus must have been like"? Do you love people so much that it hurts? That you sacrifice? Wasn't that supposed to be the goal of all this knowledge we have of Christ? That we become more like him?

Mark 2:1-13

Pastor Kurt Gebhards continued his study of the book of Mark this week and once again I'd like to share some of the highlights.

Mark 2:1-13 1 A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. 2 They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. 3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
8 Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? 9 Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? 10 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, 11 “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.

Jesus had come “home” to Capernaum. This was probably to Peter’s house. And the word immediately got out that He was back and the people flocked to see more demons cast out and more people healed. But the Bible states that Jesus stayed focused. He “preached the word to them.” He was intent on spiritual healing.

But the crowd was frenzied. 31 times in the book of Mark it talks about people mobbing Jesus. But He was always calm, gracious and compassionate.

This time the house was so crowded that a paralytic and his 4 friends couldn’t get in the door. And they were desperate for Jesus to heal the man. He was their only hope. So they went up the stairs to the flat roof and began to dig through the clay layer, the tile layer and the sticks and thatch layer until they had a big enough hole to lower down the man who was on a stretcher.

This would have taken awhile and caused a huge mess! The people in the house must have certainly wondered what was going on! But Jesus didn’t seem irritated. In fact He honored their desperate action, by calling the man “My Son.” And He forgave the man’s sins, showing His priority for spiritual healing over physical healing.

The scribes were thinking “Only God can forgive sins.” And they were right. Only God can! But, they missed the fact that Jesus IS God! Instead they called Him a blasphemer.

Jesus answered their thoughts. And then He also physically healed the man to show His authority over everything. Christ has authority over our lives: our jobs, our homes, our thoughts, our finances, our future! Every time we reject His authority we call Him a blasphemer, saying He doesn’t have the right to do this. But He does!

Christmas Eve

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a SAVIOUR, which is CHRIST the Lord.”

Happy Birthday, Jesus! Merry Christmas, All!

God Opened the Heavens and said, “I Love You!”

A friend invited us to visit his church today; Harvest Bible Chapel. He knew John would love the praise band and I would love the sermon. And I do love sermons where I learn something new and that also ignite something inside me.

The minister today talked about what it was really like for Jesus to come to earth, when and where He did. And how we need to get beyond the “familiar” of Christmas to see the scriptural. There were a couple things from his sermon I’d like to remember.

The shepherds were excited by the message the angels gave them. They ran to Bethlehem to tell others and to see the baby for themselves. The people in Bethlehem were interested in what was going on because it was unusual – kind of like us reading the news and talking about it. But, they held back. They just wondered and talked about it. But the shepherds worshipped.

We need to get excited and worship, not just sit back and wonder.

Another thing he said was that in the Christmas story in Luke 2:1-20 in one verse Jesus is referred to as Savior, Christ and Lord. Savior is really what Jesus’ name meant. Jesus is another name for Joshua, which means salvation. Christ is His deity and Lord is what He is: ruler of all. The pastor said as Christians instead of just calling Him Jesus like even unbelievers are comfortable doing, we need to call Him Lord Jesus or Jesus Christ or even The Lord Jesus Christ.

And finally he told a story about coming home from work one day and as he was getting out of the car his 2-year-old opened the front door and shouted, “Guess what! Guess what!” He couldn’t imagine what she was so excited to tell him and answered, “What?”

She said, “I LOVE YOU!”

And that’s what God did on Christmas. He opened the Heavens and said, “I have something exciting to tell you! I LOVE YOU!”

Faithful in Christ Jesus

I've been trying to read the book of Ephesians everyday for a month. I had heard somewhere that if a Christian does that it will change him. I've taught this book before and studied it at various times, but every time, something new speaks to me.

In Chapter 1 verse 1 Paul wrote "To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus." My application Bible says "faithful in Jesus" is a great reputation to have. "What an honor for a believer to be described that way. What would it take for others to characterize you as faithful in Christ Jesus? Hold fast to your faith, one day at a time; faithfully obey God, even in the details of life. Then, like the Ephesians, you will be known as a person who is faithful to the Lord."

Only Christ

I’ve been carrying around a piece of an article in my Daytimer for years and thought I would share it. I have no idea where I got it from, but I love it.

Salvation comes from Christ alone. That means it’s not Christ plus your good behavior, it’s not Christ plus the years you taught Sunday School; it’s not Christ plus your tithe; it’s not Christ plus the church you attend.

It’s not Christ plus the size of your Bible; nor Christ plus the number of verses you memorize. It’s not Christ plus the title of deacon’ it’s not Christ plus a good driving record; it’s not Christ plus well-behaved children.

It’s not Christ plus a 40-day fast; it’s not Christ plus the right job; it’s not Christ plus the right spouse; it’s not Christ plus wisdom from the latest Christian seminar. It’s not Christ plus a college education.

It’s simply Christ. Christ plus nothing.

For more on this topic:
Read "One Way"

Happy Easter

Happy Easter! He is Risen!

Seven Days to Live

Bill Hybels has a good article over at Today's Christian Woman. It answers:
What can we learn from Jesus' last week on earth?

Read it here

1st John 2:24-29

1 John 2:24-29 “As for you, let that abide in you, which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. This is the promise, which He Himself made to us: eternal life. These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.

As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.

Now little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”

“Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.” What are the basic Christian doctrines?

1. Christ is God’s Son
2. He died for our sins
3. He was raised from the dead to give us new life
4. He will return and establish His Kingdom

John is encouraging them to hold onto the basics; the things they learned first. Nothing else you learn after this, if it’s true, will contradict those things.
Verses 26 and 27 really talk about the fact that as believers we have the Holy Spirit inside us and He is teaching us. When we listen to preachers and teachers, not only do we compare what they say to scripture, but also to what the Holy Spirit tells us.

Verse 28: the best way to prepare for Christ’s return is to live with Him everyday. To never forget His presence.

A commentator wrote, “We will all be called out of this world sometime and if we’ve never thought about God we will go and meet a stranger and it will be scary, but if we’ve walked with Christ and prayed to He and God and stayed in the Word, then we will really be going home and it will merely be entry into a nearer presence with God and Jesus.”

How we feel about that day depends on how we live now.

And again, in the last verse, what we say we believe shows by our actions.

Thoughts from 1st John Part Two

What do we believe anymore? How many people have ever looked up anything on Wikipedia? Do you know that regular people write that? And many do it so they can link to their own websites for their own promotional gain.

How many look up medical questions on line? Do you know which sites you can believe and which ones you can’t?

We are bombarded by the written word. And we are bombarded by false prophets. God knew this would happen and provided us with His Word to use as our plumbline.

I once read something in a study of the Gospel of John, that I wrote down to save,

“The awful responsibility for rejection is proportionate to the light received. It is God, the Creator, who deigns to speak to men in the person of His Son.To be given light and to refuse it by ignoring His Words, by showing indifference to those words, by refusing to give time to reading them or by rejecting those words – is to be judged by those words.”

In the early days after the ascension of Jesus, the Gospel, or Good News of the gift of salvation and eternal life through faith in Jesus, was conveyed to the world through the preaching of the apostles. Men that Jesus had officially appointed as witnesses to Himself.

In John 14:26 Jesus told them that the Holy Spirit would “remind you of everything I have said to you.” In John 16:13 and 15 He promised them that the Holy Spirit would “guide you into all truth” and would “take from what is mine and make it known to you.”

Basically the same thing is said in Matthew 16:17-19 and 28:19. In a unique way the Holy Spirit would bring Christ’s words back to the remembrance of the apostles so that they could be recorded with divine authority as God’s truth. Ephesians 2:20 tells us that the church is built upon this foundation of apostles and prophets.

As time passed and the apostles spread out over the world – many people were so fascinated with Jesus they attempted to write about Him. (Luke 1:1)

As these other writings began to appear it was clear that a distinction had to be made as to what was merely the product of imagination and what was truly authoritative. The criterion of authority was that the true Gospels must conform completely to the oral teaching of the apostles themselves. By the end of the 1st century every book of the New Testament had been written, but not yet assembled into one book. The process of assembly was almost complete by the end of the 2nd century. Whenever it was certain that an apostle had written a book or authorized it’s writing that book was deemed indispensable and included in Scripture.

The apostles had lived with Jesus; they had first hand knowledge of Him. They were men of impeccable authority who would consider it blasphemy to relate anything not thoroughly investigated or received directly from Him.

The next most authoritative writers were the men who knew the apostles well and were approved by them as reliable witnesses. Luke is an example.

Each of the 4 Gospels was written either to a different group of people or for a different purpose, which is why certain things might have been emphasized or pointed out in 1 but not another. For instance – John was the last of the 4 written. By then a lot of pagan philosophies had arisen. Paul talked about these in some of his letters. We talked about the Gnostics when we studied the book of Colossians. They believed everything material was evil and everything spiritual was good, so that God, who was wholly good wouldn’t have any contact with earth or man –THEY said. Seemists, another group, had trouble believing Jesus’ divine nature. They thought it descended on Him at His baptism and left Him just before His death on the cross. They inferred that His sufferings were only seeming and not real. They also denied the reality of the incarnation. Hellenistic Christians, in their desire to appear intellectual attempted to relate Christ to current philosophical ideas. This threatened to undermine true faith in Christ: as the Way, the Truth and the Life.

All these groups back then claimed to be Christian and also claimed that they had a higher enlightenment, a closer, mystic fellowship with God, clearer knowledge and truth and freedom from sin. Both their spiritual pretensions and fantastic view of Christ made them a bad influence on the Asian churches and caused more than one Christian writer to dispute their claims. 1st John was written because of the Seemists. And John says in that book that they weren’t true Christians.

The groups were educated people and they wanted Christianity to be intellectual, fit to stand beside the other great philosophies of the day. But, the effect of their teaching was to destroy the incarnation, to eliminate the Christian ethic and to make fellowship within the church impossible because of their elitism.

The claim of knowing Christ is meaningless apart from obedience to His commands. Living as He lived – by His example – is the evidence of our faith and union with Him.

John wrote his gospel to correct these tendencies and to show Christ was/IS the unique Son of God. John 20:31 says, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in His name.”

Matthew, written about AD 60, gives special emphasis to Christ’s person – in view of past prophecies. He was writing mainly to the Jews who of course knew the Old Testament. He showed Jesus as King. Mark was full of action and anecdotes. He was the first gospel, written about AD 58 and the shortest. He wrote down Jesus’ words and the things He did. He showed Jesus as the obedient servant. Luke linked events with the names of governors and places – kind of putting Jesus into the part of history when He lived. He showed Jesus as the Ideal Son of Man and he interviewed many people including Jesus’ Mother, and carefully documented it all.

The book of John was written about AD 98 after a lifetime of meditative reflection on Christ by the man who was known to be a thinker and loved by Jesus.

“When Jesus decided He was Messiah”

I was asked to do a lesson on a comment made in a film from the Discovery Channel about Jesus where the narrator apparently said, “then Jesus decided He was Messiah.”

It bothered a lot of people, me included.

And I think the only way to answer that is to go to (John 1:1)(When a Bible verse is in parenthesis you should look it up and read it yourself.)

Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who existed from the ages of eternity, created all things and became flesh in order to reveal the person of God to us.

The Greek translation of the word Word, in the way it was used here, is Logos. It was used in Greek philosophy to indicate the “First Cause.” The great unknown intelligent reason, will and power behind the universe, which the pagan philosophies of that day called “God.”

John purposely chose this word and gave it to Jesus in the beginning of his gospel. The beginning of John is a lot like the beginning of Genesis. Genesis starts with the creation of the world. John places Jesus right there as it happened and even before.

In the beginning WAS the Word. Not IS – WAS. Before the world was created or time began, Jesus Christ, the Word was there already. Jesus Himself made similar statements concerning His eternal pre-existence. (John 8:58)

The Word was WITH God. In the Greek text even more than the English text, the word “with” suggests a dynamic co-relationship and communion of 2 distinct personalities: Jesus the Son and God the Father. (Gen.1:26) (Ps.110:1) (Matthew 22:41-45)

“And the Word was God” Christ has the same nature as God Himself. All the attributes of God are also attributes of Christ. (Hebrews 1:3) The very stamp – the exact replication of God.

The deity of Christ is absolutely basic to Christian faith. He is not just our Savior. He is our Lord and “Lord” in Biblical usage implies deity. In most cases when used in the New Testament it is the Greek substitute for the Hebrew Old Testament word Yahweh or Jehovah – the name of God.

John the Baptist’s purpose was to prepare people for the coming of the Messiah. And he was very effective. Because of his preaching Jews were being baptized for their sins. In John 1:31 he stated, “I myself did not know him” – This probably meant that he didn’t know until then Jesus was the Messiah. They were cousins, so he would have at least known whom Jesus the man was. But, it wasn’t until then that God revealed the Messiah to John with the sign of the spirit coming down on him. (John 1:32-33)

When that happened Jesus would be publicly proclaimed as Messiah, the Lamb of God and the Son of God. And His ministery would begin.

I read in a study of Matthew that when Jesus was baptized and the Holy Spirit came down upon Him in the form of a dove and God’s voice said, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” That it was not only the dividing line between Jesus’ private and public life, but until that point Jesus had been living a “human” life without supernatural powers – but, He had still managed to live sin-free – giving us an example of how to do it. Then the Holy Spirit coming down was a kind of an anointing of Him from God for His work as our High Priest.

Now He could use His power for the miracles we see in the New Testament. Now He could show His deity. Jesus studied the Old Testament His whole life. He would have read the prophecies about Himself – especially: (Isaiah 2:11) (Isaiah 53) and (Isaiah 55). But, He only did what God told Him to and when God told Him to, which is why He waited until He was 30 and baptized by John the Baptist. That was God’s timing for His ministry to start.

Faith is a gift from God. It comes through an internal working of the Holy Spirit. The natural person “does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for the are foolishness to him.” That’s from 1 Cor.2:14.

But, 1 Cor. 2:12 says “We have not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.”

When Jesus asked Peter who He was and Peter said, “You are Christ the Son of the Living God” what was Jesus answer? (Matthew 16:17)

Romans 10:17 also tells us that faith comes by hearing and reading God’s Word. Faith is also a choice. We either choose to believe Scripture or we choose to believe the doubters.

The Jews missed out on Salvation because although they had been given the Old Testament and knew it, they believed what they chose to believe – that their Messiah would be an earthly king who would get them out of Roman control.

Satan just needs a tiny crack to get into our minds.