Consider Him

Recently in my scripture reading I came across two small words..."Consider him". Hebrews 12:2 & 3(NIV) says, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" (bold added). When I read those words I immediately began recalling all He has done in my life; especially since the beginning of this year. Since January (2009) He has dealt with three major issues in my life. First he dealt with my finances as my wife and I began to make some changes in the way we have done things in the past. With that then came faith. He began to open my eyes to the idea of truly trusting Him in all things and leaning upon the promises He has given. That then led into dealing with the various fears of my life. Today, as a result of what He has been doing I am beginning to see how big our God is, how wonderful His love is for us and how truly amazing He is in everything. It excites me to think of it, to consider Him and all that He does and has done.

One of my new favorite worship songs is "How He Loves Us" written by John Mark McMillian. The words to the song grip me and entice me to dive into the deep waters of His love and personality. The chorus, though very simple in its wording, says it all, "Yeah, He loves us, Oh how He loves us, Oh how He loves us, Oh how He Loves". Think about it. The God of the universe, who made the stars and every living creature, the God who has everything and can do anything somehow for some reason loves us. To prove it He sacrificed His own Son so that we would not die and spend eternity separated from Him. To prove it He puts up with our inconsistent hearts day in and day out through grace and mercy. Oh yes, He will judge us and we will be held accountable for our lives but He loves us and gives us every opportunity to turn to Him, to be rescued, to dwell in His presence, to experience all that He is and has, to spend enternity with Him.

It takes time to consider Him. It is not something you can do quickly or nonchalantly. He is too massive, powerful, all encompassing to do so. God is great. He is amazing. But these are human words that cannot truly capture Him. To truly consider Him one must go beyond their words, their simple mortal expressions of who their mind says He is. One must take time, away from all distraction, to think upon Him, to meditate on His ways and His activity in their life. When done so it will put a smile on the face and a supernatural glow within the heart.

When we read His word and understand what it is telling us, all we can do is consider Him, His ways, His truths, His glory. Think. Search. Contemplate. He loves us! He died for us. Nothing can thwart His plans. No one is more powerful. What can come against Him? He provides. He protects. He saves. He heals. He disciplines for maturity sake. He loves us!

As I have considered Him a few verses have begun to stick out to me. Consider the truths within these verses and then search the scriptures for more. You will find so much that God wants to speak to you and you won't be able to contain yourself. You will automatically begin to consider Him.

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8 & 9(NIV)

"You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." 1 John 4:4(NIV)

"If God is for us, who can be against us?" Romans 8:31b(NIV)

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8 35, 37 - 39.(NIV)

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us," Ephesians 3:20(NIV)

"There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD...victory rests with the LORD." Proverbs 21: 30 & 32(NIV)

"'...Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.' So we say with confidence, 'The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?'" Hebrews 13:5 & 6(NIV)

"His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us the very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." 2 Peter 1:3 & 4(NIV)

CONSIDER HIM!

Be blessed today.

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!