salvation

This Old House

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 3 Comments

Sanctification is like being brought up again but this time in Christ. God is your Father, Jesus is your elder brother who has blazed the trail for you, and the Holy Spirit draws you deeper into your new identity in Christ.

You are born again but living inside an old house. Don’t get focused on the rusty hinges, the peeling paint, and the overgrown lawn. Keep your attention focused on the architect and builder of the new house you’ll be living in. Old House

Meanwhile, refuse to participate in the conspiracy of silence. You continue to be a wretched sinner even as a Christian. You have great examples of confession from the apostles. Paul called himself the chief of sinners. So can you. There’s no shame in that.

It is the job of the Holy Spirit to make you more humble and dependent on the Lord, more grateful for his sacrifice, and more adoring of him as a wonderful Savior.

Don’t be surprised at your trials then, Peter said. They’re meant to make your faith like gold. And faith attaches itself to Jesus who was meek and lowly and won salvation for you.

Joy here and now is your birthright and inheritance even when you sin miserably as a Christian.

Talk to me.

messychristians@gmail.com

 

Nothing Good Comes from Inside

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 2 Comments

How do you handle remaining sin in your life?

What does it look like? It’s what the Apostle Paul talks about in Romans 7:15.

“For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

And then again in verse 19: White

“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”

That pretty much summed up my Christmas vacation.

Stick around long enough with family and friends and eventually you’ll find yourself in Romans 7.

So what’s the solution?

Here it is:

Keep your eyes on the completed work of Christ on the cross for you.

Once that melts your heart, then confess your sins to him.

And don’t look inward for your sanctification – something I do frequently – because it’s not there. You’ll only find a mess.

Glue your sight onto Christ who is your righteousness, sanctification and salvation.

Talk to me.

messychristians@gmail.com

 

 

 

Dump the Guilt

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 2 Comments

A friend of mine is fond of saying, “Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.”

He’s right.

We feel it when we violate our own rules. “I should have saved more money this year.”

Or when we don’t do what we know is important. Like go to church. Read the bible. Pray. Igor Mitoraj

How about when we don’t live up to own expectations? That’s a big one. There’s a video making the rounds on social media of a young boy seated at a window seat on a plane. He’s admonishing his father for not living up to his dreams of being a airline pilot. How does the boy know this about his father? “Because I want to be a pilot, and I plan to do it,” he says defiantly.

Wow. I’d spank him for his insolence. But you get the point. We are full of self-salvation strategies, aren’t we? We spend our days doing things to please ourselves in the hope that is also pleases God.

But we know better. Jesus’s perfect life of obedience to God’s law is the only effort that pleases God, and his death on the cross for our sins is the only reconciliation that He will accept.

If you’ve delivered yourself over to God’s plan of salvation for your life, you have nothing to be guilty of anymore. Jesus bore your guilt, your shame, your failure and your sin for you on the cross.

You are set free to love and serve him out of gratitude.

Go out and jump for joy!

Talk to me.

messychristians@gmail.com

 

Does God Love You When You Sin?

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ Leave a comment

How often are you disgusted with your life of faith?

If you’re like me, very often.

I seem to live in unbelief more than in faith.

Even as a Christian I live my life as if God didn’t exist.

I don’t take him at his Word.

I’m impatient waiting for the fulfillment of his promises.

I’m so far away from rejoicing in his goodness and faithfulness it’s disgusting.

The stunning fact is that while God hates sin and grieves over the suffering we endure in our lives, he is not angry at us!

He doesn’t hold grudges, he doesn’t bring up the past, and he certainly doesn’t abandon us to figure things out on our own when we’re at our worst.

How can I say this?

Because of the gospel, of course.

Think theologically with me for a moment.

Does God have any negative emotions towards Jesus? Does he get fed up, exasperated and lose patience with him? Does he get angry and walk away?

Absolutely not. God has nothing but delight and love for his Son. He adores him.

And God delights and adores you and me, even when we sin!

Read that again. It’s true. dance

Jesus paid for those sins. God doesn’t see them anymore. He has wrapped us in the glowing white robes of his Son’s perfection. We are united to him in all that he is, and Jesus’s perfect record of faith and patience and obedience is now ours.

God’s scandalous love in Jesus makes us dance and sing, even in our weakness and failure and sin!

Soak your heart in this truth today.

Talk to me.

messychristians@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’re Perfect

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 9 Comments

If you are in Christ, you are loved, washed and cleaned up.

You walk around in the perfection of Jesus.

Since he never sinned, neither have you!

Not only that, God sees you as never having had a sin nature!

Meditate on that for a while.  photo (90)

Even in your worst moments when your life is in chaos, and all you know is failure and weakness, you are still in Christ and perfect!

Where you fail, he has obeyed perfectly for you.

Where you sin, he has paid for it on the cross.

When you are embarrassed and feeling ashamed, he has succeeded for you.

Barbara Duguid writes in her book, Extravagant Grace, “That means you are free to struggle and fail; you are free to grow slowly; you are free at times not to grow at all; you are free to cast yourself on the mercy of God for a lifetime.”

While obedience makes God happy, loving and delighting in Jesus, who has given you his perfect record even in the middle of your messy life, makes him happier.

Duguid goes on to say, “Repeated failure does not mean you are unsaved or that God is tired of you and disappointed. It does mean he has called you to a difficult struggle and that he will hold on to you in all your standing and falling and bring you safely home.”

Wow!

That’s breathtaking.

Take that with you this weekend.

And the rest of your life.

Talk to me.

messychristians@gmail.com

 

 

A Funeral Is Better Than a Party

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 2 Comments

I attended a funeral yesterday for a church friend who died last week.

I was struck by this thought: Funerals are better than parties.

Why would I say that?

They remind me that I, too must die.  funeral

We all have expiration dates, but we don’t like thinking about those.

But it’s good for us. It forces the subject even for a little while.

The mortality rate has always been at 100%.

It doesn’t change from generation to generation.

We cannot mastermind our own exits.

That’s because there’s a time to be born and a time to die, and God holds the calendar on both.

So today is the only time we can be sure of. The past is gone, and the future is not certain.

Now is the time to renounce every hope of saving yourself and turn to the One who saved you. He did it 2,000 years ago on a cross outside Jerusalem. His name is Jesus and he paid the penalty for your sins and mine so we could be forgiven of our sins and given life.

That’s why you need a funeral.

We need that reality slap in the face.

According to Ecclesiastes, life under the sun doesn’t end well.

But life over the sun ends in triumph. It’s called eternal life and it’s a free gift if you believe in the work of Christ for you.

Won’t you take that step today?

Talk to me.

messychristians@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Does God Like Social Media?

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ Leave a comment

Face-to-face is the original social media.

Conversations that used to take place over a meal or drinks after work is now happening on Facebook, Skype and Tweets.  tweet2

Whatever the delivery system, online gurus say it has to have at least these 4 components to be meaningful:

  1. relevant
  2. practical value
  3. emotion
  4. stories

But even if all these components are there, I’ve noticed something – people are hungry for human interaction, not just cyber chats. They want face-to-face. They need to feel connected to others they can see, hear, touch and laugh with.

And no online delivery system can deliver what a personal encounter can.

And God knew that.

God, with all his supernatural abilities, could have designed a mechanism whereby he could communicate with us without leaving heaven to do it.

He could have sent angel messengers.

He could have boomed his voice from heaven.

He could have scared the life out of us with flashes of lightning and peals of thunder.

Instead, he sent his own flesh and blood Son to live among us, suffer alongside us, and then die a horrible death.

Where’s the value in that?

God knew the kind of mess we were in – we were dead in our sins and unable to rescue ourselves. So he fixed the problem by sending his Son Jesus to live a life of perfect obedience to the law of God for us, and then die in our place in order to pay the price for our sins.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” – Ephesians 2: 4-7 ESV

So how is that relevant to me?

If Jesus hadn’t done that, you would have no hope of measuring up to God’s standards and being loved by him.

“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5: 7-8 ESV

Only Jesus measured up and secured your relationship with God, so when you place your faith in his finished work for you, God fully accepts you as his cherished child.

By taking that step, for the first time in your life you have face-to-face communication with God through Jesus.

Now that beats anything you can have online!

Want to plug into the best conversation today?

“Dear Jesus,

Thank you for living a perfect life for me, and for dying to pay the price for my sins on the cross. I receive you as my Lord and Savior. Fill me with your love and let me live from now on for you. Amen.”

If you’ve prayed this today, would you let me know?

Are You Singing?

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ Leave a comment

A friend of mine has been asking lately what the difference is between a true Christian and a false one.

My answer is simple. A true Christian is someone who believes in Christ alone, through faith alone, by grace alone.

But my friend continues to ask, “But what about the evidence in his life?”

What of it? grape vine

James says, “Faith without works is dead.” And God says the greatest work is to believe in His Son whom He has sent into the world so all men may be saved.

Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 

Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” – John 6:28, 29 ESV

So if you believe that Jesus Christ is your Savior who died on the cross to pay the price for your sins, then this is counted as a good work in God’s eyes. In fact it’s the greatest work because without faith it is impossible to please God.

John 15 says, if you are a branch that is united to the vine, then you will show forth good fruit. Have you ever seen a branch huffing and puffing and sweating to produce grapes?

The same is true of you. As a Christian you are doing good works all the time, but most of the time you won’t see them because you’d be tempted to pride. But God sees them and He is pleased with you because you are in Christ. See Romans 6. Ephesians 1 & 2.

And remember, all your works are tainted with sin, even good things like prayer, witnessing, giving to the poor. They all must be mediated by Christ in order for God to accept them.

So I told my friend to stop worrying and start singing.

You do the same.

Is Your Life Worth Saving?

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ Leave a comment

There’s a new advertising campaign grabbing my eyeballs in the subway station these days.

Everywhere I look the walls are covered with large posters asking, “Is your digital life worth saving?”

Clearly for this tech company the answer is yes.

Tech companies have been designing our digital lives for quite a while. And now they want to save them.

But tech companies aren’t the only ones that believe your life is important, digital or otherwise.

ER doctors believe your life is worth saving.

Paramedics and rescue workers believe it, too.

So how come you don’t believe it?

“What do you mean? I’m always saving my life.

I’m up on the latest cure, the most up-to-date therapy, and the most exciting lifestyle I can buy.

What’s wrong with that?”

Nothing, except it’s only skin deep. photo(11)

What if you’re missing what’s really important?

What about your soul?

“I’ve got that covered,” you say.

“I go to church on Easter and Christmas, I recycle, I rescue orphaned animals, and I don’t cheat on my taxes. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Sure. You get kudos with the relatives, and you’re not arrested by the IRS. But will doing good things save your soul?

“Well, if that won’t, what will?”

We will never be good enough to save our own soul. Sin has marred our lives and keeps us from a relationship with God. That’s why God has made a way for your sins to be forgiven.  And you don’t have to cross oceans or change your lifestyle to get it.

He offers it to you right now in the Person of his Son, Jesus.

Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”

Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” – John 6:28-29 ESV

By receiving God’s gift, he draws you into relationship with himself.

Jesus is God’s plan for saving your life.

Now and forever, without a contract or fees.

Want to find out more about saving your life?

Send me a message.