death

How Being Baptized Can Get You Killed

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ Leave a comment

You’ve heard stories about the underground church in China. You’ve also read stories about Christians who have risked their lives for the gospel in foreign countries.

This is a true story that is a little closer to home. It’s from a man who teaches a bible study in a federal prison in Northern California.

“We had six baptisms today. We have a tank outside the church and they fill it up when we do baptisms. One white man and two black men and three Latino men were baptized. One of the inmates told me that these men’s faith was genuine. I asked him, ‘How do you know?’ He said, ‘Because they were all baptized in the same tank.’

“You see, in this prison, everything is segregated by race. Each race has its own shower and toilet, sink and place to eat. You never eat or shower at the other race’s area. It can get you stabbed or killed. These men, of different races, were being baptized in the same tank. That can get them in trouble with their own race group. All they really have now is the church body.

“In our day, and in our country, I never thought that a baptism could get you killed.”

Here is risk for the sake of the gospel.

Here is also a beautiful picture of how Christ tears down the separation of the races and creates one new race in himself.

Those who belong to Jesus Christ are now brothers with the same Father, who share in the same inheritance, and look forward to the same eternal destiny.

Jesus Is A Happy Man

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ Leave a comment

Do you know that Christ is happy in his exalted state in heaven?

Every day, if that is how time is measured in heaven, he looks around and sees the results of his death on the cross for his people.

First, he sees the conversion and the salvation of sinners.

Second, he looks over the amazing expanse of heaven and sees it populated with the people he died and shed his blood for.

Third, he looks down on our world and sees so many coming into faith, taking baby steps in grace, others advancing in their faith, and still others strong as warriors in their faith, and this brings pleasure to his soul.

Fourth, he sees those arriving in heaven, having finished the race, and he rejoices!

Jesus is fully satisfied with his own sacrifice!

And if he’s satisfied, so is God the Father, and the Holy Spirit.

They rejoice together!

There is joy in heaven over you!

Why IsThe Good News Really Good News?

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ Leave a comment

If it’s been a while since you’ve read the book of Romans, I recommend a re-read. Especially chapter 1, although the entire book will change your life.

Verses 1 through 7 is one large, explosive sentence that will rock your world.

Paul, who wrote the book, calls himself a slave of Jesus Christ. Where was his self-esteem?

He was called to be an apostle (a sent-one). Who called him? God did. Paul didn’t appoint himself like so many do today.

Paul was set apart for the gospel of God. That was his job description. He didn’t have to forge a career path, or construct a vision for his ministry.

And what gospel was this that Paul was set apart for?

The same gospel that the prophets preached in the Old Testament concerning Christ, the Messiah. This gospel was not a new message for New Testament people, but an ancient message promised to God’s people from Genesis all the way through to Revelation.

Jesus Christ was both God and man. His human lineage came from David and his identity as the Son of God was declared according to the Spirit when Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

It was this gospel that Paul was commissioned to preach to the Gentiles.

Have you been called to belong to Jesus Christ? Has God revealed his Christ to you as the solution to your sins and separation from God?

If the answer is no, re-read Romans 1: 1-7. Then pray this prayer:

Lord Jesus, thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment on the cross and offering me forgiveness and new life. Knowing that you have been raised from the dead, I turn from my sins and receive you as my Lord. Amen.

If the answer is yes, you do know him as your Lord, know this: it is God who loved you to this. It is God who called you to be a saint (set-apart one).

This was God’s idea, not yours!

Go out and tell someone!

Leave me a comment if you prayed to receive Jesus today.

Will The Real Gospel Stand Up?

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What is the gospel?

Is it, “Ask Jesus into your heart”?

Or is it to give your testimony in public?

Actually it’s neither.

The word gospel means good news. It’s an announcement, a report, of the historical facts of Jesus Christ and him crucified.

It tells you that you don’t need a set of rules for saving yourself because the good news is that Jesus has done the work for you.

From A to Z, the gospel is about Jesus. His life, death and resurrection according to God’s plan.

The gospel is not someone’s testimony about how he or she became a Christian. They became converted through the gospel, but their personal story is not the gospel.

If there was ever a group of people who could have given their personal testimonies about their relationship to Jesus, it was the apostles. On a few occasions when they did, they spoke of their fear and failure. Instead they spoke of Christ and his cross for sinners.

God himself says that his power lies in the gospel. This is the means by which he brings people to believe in his Son.

The gospel is not a set of directions for saving yourself, but good news about what Jesus has done to save you.

So what’s your responsibility in this?

You job is to believe God. To believe that he sent his only Son to rescue you from sin and death and hell. And when you place your faith in Jesus, you become a new creature in Christ, God adopts you into his family, and you live your life as someone who has been resurrected to a new life in Christ.

You are no longer your own, but you have been bought with a price, the priceless life and blood of Jesus Christ.

And from that moment on, you live in gratitude to God and in love to your neighbor.

 

Happy Easter!

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ Leave a comment

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  2 Corinthians 5:21

“When you become aware of your sin and frightened by it, you must not allow the sin to remain in your conscience.  This would  only lead to despair. Rather, just as your awareness of sin flowed to you from Christ, so you must pour your sin back on him to free your conscience.

“So be careful you don’t become like the misguided people who allow their sin to bite at them and eat at their hearts.  They strive to rid themselves of this sin by running around doing good works.  But you have a way to get rid of your sins.  You throw yours sins on Christ when you firmly believe that Christ’s wounds and suffering carried and paid for your sins.

“As Isaiah said, ‘The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’  (Isaiah 53:6) Peter said Christ himself ‘bore our sins in his body on the tree’ (I Peter 2:24). And Paul said,  ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.’

(2 Corinthians 5:21)

“You must rely on these and similar verses with your whole heart.  The more your conscience torments you, the more you must rely on them.   For if you you don’t do this and try to quiet your conscience through your own sorrow and penance, you will never find peace of mind and will finally despair in the end.  If you try to deal with sin in your conscience, let it remain there, and continue to look at it in your heart, your sins will become too strong for you.  They will seem to live forever.  But, when you think of your sins being on Christ and boldly believe that he conquered them through his resurrection, then they are quite dead and gone.  Sin can’t remain on Christ.  His resurrection swallowed up sin.” –  Martin Luther

Happy Easter!

Leave Your Status at the Door

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 6 Comments

In continuing with the theme of God’s kingdom, it is here that we can live status-free.

The world jostles for position all the time. It starts in the family. There’s a favorite aunt, or a special cousin. There are the relatives nobody likes, and there are others that everybody adores.

Then there’s school. The cool, the popular, and the geeks.

College is no better. Ivy league vs. state universities. Private vs. community colleges. Yale sounds better than Berkeley, Stanford more elitist than Cal State.

Once you get into the work force, you quickly slam into the status levels there. It’s called management and labor. The two great divides.

The only place on earth where this isn’t true is in God’s kingdom. There we have one head – Jesus. The rest of us are all brothers and sisters. We came into the kingdom on the same playing field – through the cross. We stay in the kingdom through no merit of our own, but solely on the merits of Christ and what he has done for us.

There is no room for posturing, snobbery, or reputation.

But there is plenty of room for compassion, love and service to one another.

Next time you’re tempted to elevate or belittle yourself – both are sin – remember that your life is defined by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He’s the ruler of the universe. You can rub shoulders with him!

A Strange Story

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In the biblical drama, all our expectations, assumptions, and cherished ideas are thrown into question. God the judge bears the sentence that his own justice demands. The offended party becomes the redeemer; even as he is subjected to further acts of the most heinous violence from those he redeems. The outcasts become royal heirs, the outsiders become insiders and the insiders outsiders, those who thought they were righteous are in fact condemned and those who were beyond any hope of moral recovery are declared righteous. A strange story, indeed. – Michael Horton

For more by Michael Horton, please visit:

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/

Gripped by Grace

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ Leave a comment

What does it look like to be gripped by grace? According to the book of Philippians, chapter two, it begins with thinking of yourself less and thinking of others with more honor. Jesus didn’t hog his rightful place in heaven with God. Instead he left heaven willingly and came to earth as a servant and to die as a criminal. Jesus rejected the honors right, and poured himself out for wicked, selfish and rebellious people who hated him.

What does this tell you?  That the greatest communication about God is being a servant. Jesus spent his capital for the sake of his enemies, men and women who should have been his friends, but instead were traitors. He was the ultimate promiscuous giver of his grace, his life and his death.

Without him, we’d continue in our sins and be stranded without hope.

With him, we are made new in his death, burial and resurrection. We are the only people on earth with hope and a future.

Tell somebody!

Is There Any Hope?

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 2 Comments

Q: Are you saying then that we’re destined to live lives of spiritual defeat with only little respites along the way, and that’s as good as it gets?

A: Not at all!  God’s goal for us is to be like Christ.  At the moment, Jesus is triumphant and glorified at God’s right hand, and God’s guarantee to us is that we will someday share in this magnificent image.  But when Jesus lived where we do, His life was not the glittering thing it is now.  It was marked by weakness, suffering, and by a genuine and daily dependence on His Father in Heaven.  Not even He could rise from the dead until He first died.  The road to Glory runs through the Cross, both for the Lord Himself and all who want to be His disciples.

Q: What about the verses that say we are more than conquerors in Christ, that we can do all things through Him, etc.?

A: We believe the verses, of course, but the success and triumph they promise look a lot like failure and loss: ‘tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, being killed all day long and accounted as sheep for the slaughter’.  In this life God does not give us victory over these things: He gives us victory in and through them.  Just as He did for His Son who learned obedience through the things He suffered.