Titus 2:11 & 12

Titus 2:11 & 12 (NIV)

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age…"

I thought I would give a little insight on a section of scripture that has become one of my life pillars – Titus 2:11 & 12. This scripture first came to life for me a few years back as I fought through some of my most difficult struggles. Like all humans, I sin and have had to face my own personal demons. There are times in these battles we face when we become weary and begin to feel that victory will never come. As a result, shame and spiritual tyranny seem to rule the roost of our heart. We begin to feel as though God is mad at us and will never turn to us unless we first fix the problem. So many times I have found myself in this exact place.

I can recall moments of spiritual despair; feeling as though I would never be good enough to live for God the way I had hoped and imagined. However, God, through a series of Grace movements in my life began to reveal His loving kindness to me. The more I tried to deny the possibility of what He was doing the more He began to open my eyes and help me to “…grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…” (Eph. 3:18 & 19). When I got it my life began to change. This started as God revealed the truth of Titus 2:11 & 12 to me.

In one of those “low” moments of life, though I felt as though God could never love me I turned to His word and found this small book in the back of the New Testament. When I read the words of these two verses the truth leaped off the page, slapped me in the face a few times and woke me up to the greatness of our Lord and Savior's heart. Then, its truth began to play out in my life.

I realized that as long as I was in the midst of my struggles I would never deserve any real advancement in life. I didn’t deserve my family, my job, my healthy relationships or even my relationship with the King of Kings. However, though I didn’t deserve them (and really no human being does as we all sin and are poisoned by its effect in our lives – Romans 3:23) God continued to show up in my life. He never left me. He never took from me those lovely blessings that I didn’t deserve. In fact, not as a reward but as an act of great love and grace, He blessed them. In those blessings I saw it; it is His grace that teaches me to say no to my wicked and poisonous ways. I was humbled. My knees became weak and I was ready to cry (and if you ask my wife that does not happen often). Jesus loved me despite my wickedness and as a result I had every desire to clean up my act and live a life worthy of my calling. Those desires were there before, but now I had power behind them to actually find success.

Today I am free and live with joy. I’m still a sinner. I do not struggle as I did but I am not without fault. I still need Jesus. However, His grace has given me the ability to live in freedom; not bound by the grip of shame or bondage. I fall, but I now know I can get up and still approach the Throne of Grace with freedom and confidence through faith (Eph. 3:12). He is not mad at me; ready to leave me and forsake me. He wants to build me and mature me. He wants to clean me of my unrighteousness. So, when I fall, instead of thinking I cannot approach Him I realize that that is the time when I must. For in His grace I will find strength to overcome and to live a self-controlled, upright and godly life.

God will discipline us (Heb. 12) and sometimes we do need to be corrected. However, even this is done out of grace. God is not like us. His anger is justified and His judgments are pure. Yet, His heart is not to throw us on the trash heap when we fail, but to rescue us and redeem us. So He gives us His grace. When we grasp it, it will change us. It will humble us and we will lose our desire to revel in sin but instead say NO to its draw and walk in His righteousness and life.

Be blessed today and walk in His great love and grace!

Keeping It Simple

I am a big advocate of keeping life and the activities of life as simple as possible. Productivity is at its greatest when simplicity lends a hand. There are places and circumstances in our life where there is no way around complexity. Our world just doesn't allow for complex problems, rules or agendas to be avoided. However, our approach to them can always be as simple as possible.

To me, when we keep it simple in our heart and in our heads, God is then given room to do what He does best; and that is, well, everything. People tend to think that they have to do it all; they think they have to conquer the world. But that is simply not true. God is the one to do the heavy lifting, the actual life changing activity, the overarching, backbreaking, stress causing work that we always try to do on our own.

Now, I will admit, I am not perfect with this idea. Many, many times do I have to remind myself, or receive the reminder from God, that I need to back off and keep it simple. I do not have to tackle the entire problem or accomplish the entire goal in one fell swoop. It's not my job nor is it my assignment to "do it all". My job is to do the little things, to stay obedient, to maintain faith and pursue God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength. He, then, will respond with the strength I lack (and beyond), the effort I'm missing, the wisdom I always seem to be without, the productivity I can't seem to reach and the portion of the assignment meant for His hands only.

Recently, I was thinking about how to attain a fairly "small" issue - WORLD WIDE REVIVAL. I was challenged by a Pastor and friend of mine to help figure out how to motivate our church congregation to dig in and pray more passionately. That is when the idea of keeping it simple really took shape in my mind. Many times we had discussed keeping it simple, however, when the challenge came during this one particular discussion the words, "It all starts here first" came to mind. The idea of WORLD WIDE REVIVAL seemed way overarching and impossible. There is no way we can achieve that without causing a little stress in our lives. However, the idea doesn't seem so luminous when we consider that God can do something huge with our simplistic obedience. All we really need to do is paint the picture of possibility and help people understand that through simple obedience, faith and prayer world wide revival could start here first.

Joshua collapsed the walls of Jericho through simple obedience as he led Israel on a march that culminated with a loud shout and a bunch of crumbling walls (Joshua 6). When King David killed Goliath he did it with a simple sling and a stone (1 Sam 17:50). Jesus' disciples and the apostles of the early church were simple everyday men. They were not special by any stretch of the world's imagination. Yet God changed the world through their obedience and simplicity. They loved the Lord, did what He commanded, loved people and prayed with faith.

If the church can understand the power of simplicity and begin to realize that no one individual or church has to carry the entire load I am confident, then, that more people would be willing to exert the effort to pray in faith and obedience. As a result God will respond in our city which will then become a light for the rest of the nation, which will become the salt of the earth; sparking world wide revival and a global outbreak of Jesus focused worship. If it can work with WORLD WIDE REVIVAL then I am certain it can work in our daily challenges, issues, problems and agendas.

So I encourage you to keep it simple and trust the Lord to take care of the rest. Remember, His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matt. 11:30).

Blessings in the name of the Lord Jesus!