Lost Proof

Attacked By Email

I Missed This Psalm

A New Heaven and A New Earth

Long before Jesus was born the prophet Isaiah had a vision of Christ’s great unifying work of salvation. Many years after Jesus died, John, the beloved disciple, had another but similar vision: He saw a new heaven and a new earth. All of creation had been transformed, dressed with immortality to be the perfect bride of Christ. In John’s vision the risen Christ speaks from his throne, saying: “Look, I am making the whole of creation new. …. Look, here God lives among human beings. He will make his home among them; they will be his people, and he will be their God, God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness or pain. The world of the past has gone” (Revelation 21:5; 21:3-4). Both Isaiah and John open our eyes to the all-inclusive nature of Christ’s saving work. - Henri Nouwen

Your Life Hangs On Your Answer

Your life hangs on how you relate these two statements:

1. “If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Righteous” (1 John 2:1).
2. “Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (John 5:14).

Do you experience the first one weakening the second?

Or do you experience the first one joyfully empowering the second?

Your life hangs on your answer.

Strange Attraction

God in Context

Context is critical these days because we’re all so overwhelmed with stimuli. With the average person seeing up to 5,000 marketing messages a day, context is perhaps the only real way to break through the clutter. Context frames the message for us, it edits out the parts that don’t matter and presents only the most crucial details.

The question becomes, in what context does God communicate? He’s clearly not limited to any particular model, but does use context to reach us? And if he does, is there anything we can do to help create a contextual situation where he can speak?

I think there is. I think that sometimes we can’t hear God because he’s out of context. He’s lowercase and insignificant and constrained primarily to Easter services and Christmas Eve services. Then we pack our lives so full of other stuff that it then becomes impossible for God to even have the room to speak to us.

One of the things that recently interested me about the Prodigal Son story is the brief mention of the famine. It’s easy to miss. In Luke 15:14 it says, “After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.” Note that it wasn’t that he just spent all his money, there was also a severe famine. The famine, set the context for recognition of his need, not that he ran out of money.

Which makes me wonder if more often than not, what we need most to contextually hear the Lord is a famine? Are there ever feast moments? Times when we think, “I am so overwhelmingly happy that I must find a way to express this in God?” Or is it always the other way around. Stripped free of everything. Famine weighing down on us, we find our context. Suddenly we are not god anymore.

Suddenly we need God. Suddenly despite all outward appearances, context is in our favor.

 

Love The LORD Your God

“The LORD your God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:4-7

Do we love the LORD our God with ALL our heart, ALL our soul and ALL our might?

If so, we will be doing what He has commanded us to do here, to share with our children our love for the LORD and all that He has done for us. Think about the legacy that we have been given to pass on to our children and to our children’s children. What joy to be able to share with them the love of the Lord and all that He is to us and has been throughout our walk with Him!

Keep the legacy going: tell your children, or your grandchildren, or a niece or a nephew what the LORD has done in your life and watch that seed take root in their hearts.

Father,

Your love has reached me and it is changing me. Help me to leave the legacy of that love. Help me to express to them just what a wonderful Father You are. Help me to live in such a way that they will see is it good to walk with You. May Your presence be evident in every part of my life. Use me to draw your little ones to You.

Amen

Samson’s Stories

Many Faces

 

“The Church as the body of Christ has many faces. The Church prays and worships. It speaks words of instruction and healing, cleanses us from our sins, invites us to the table of the Lord, binds us together in a covenant of love, sends us out to minister, anoints us when we are sick or dying, and accompanies us in our search for meaning and our daily need for support. All these faces might not come to us from those we look up to as our leaders. But when we live our lives with a simple trust that Jesus comes to us in our Church, we will see the Church’s ministry in places and in faces where we least expect it.

If we truly love Jesus, Jesus will send us the people to give us what we most need. And they are our spiritual leaders.” - Henri Nouwen