God’s love

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I have decided to follow Jesus

I heard an inspiring story during one of my trips to India. But before I share the story, a little background. Northeast India for many decades had been known as the missionaries’ graveyard. Primarily because nearly every missionary who had moved there and attempted to establish a mission station was faced with unbelievable rejection and failure. The region has been a demonic stronghold for centuries. It was rare that any missionary team would last over one year. It is reported that many got sick and some even died. But most left defeated by an unbelievable hardness of the people’s heart toward the gospel.

Even though the region was considered closed to the gospel, somehow there was one family who became a follower of Jesus. The story is told of a man who lived in a small village in this region of India. We are not sure how he heard the gospel but he was a passionate follower of Jesus. His conversion and commitment to Christ plus his zeal for the gospel had so irritated the villagers that a mob formed. They rushed this man’s house and shoved him and his family to the public square.  The village chief questioned him about his faith and gave him and his family a chance to recant. The man didn’t know what to do. So he began to sing a song that some believe he had composed.

” I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.”

With that his children were horrifically killed as he and his wife watched in horror. He was given another chance to recant and save his wife. Again, not knowing what to do, he sang another verse.

“Though none go with me still I will follow, though none go with me still I will follow, though none go with me still I will follow, no turning back, no turning back.”

He watched as they brutally murdered his wife. Then he was given one more chance to recant. He continued to sing.

“The cross before me the world behind me, the cross before me the world behind me, the cross before me the cross behind me, no turning back, no turning back.”

Even though that man and his family were killed that day, something remarkable happened. A seed was planted in the heart of the chief. It was a seed that began to grow over time. Then one day he gathered the villagers in that very same square and renounced his previous faith and he declared his allegiance to Jesus Christ. A celebration began to break out and the gospel spread not only through out that village but through the whole region. It spread because they had seen true faith and had seen the real character of God.

I believe this is one of the events that God used to open up this region of India. In the last couple of decades hundreds of thousands Indians have come to Christ. I have personally witnessed this incredible move of God.

Bottom Line

There are several lessons we can learn from this inspiring story.

1. When you make a decision to follow Jesus you will be called on to “draw a line in the sand”. We may not be called on to give our life in martyrdom like this family but we will be faced with a decision(s) that will set us apart from the world. Will I chose to follow Jesus absolutely or will I compromise just to keep my personal dream alive?

The world is not for us. The scripture tells us that we are ‘strangers and pilgrims’ in this world. In other words, we are not familiar with the territory (way of life), and we are pilgrims, just passing through on the way home (heaven).

2. God can take any tragedy, disappointment and turn it into an incredible victory. The principle of Romans 8:28 (“all things work together for our good”) is that God takes all of the successes, failures, unfairness, sacrifices and tragedies and is able to blend them all together to accomplish His will for your life.

For every tragedy and failure God has already gone ahead of his children to begin a process of turning our greatest hurt and disappointment into an incredible work of God.

3. Make sure you have absolutes in your life. We live in a “relative world” where the culture dictates what is right and wrong. As a committed follower of Jesus our life is dictated by absolutes. The old saying is true, “If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.” Absolutes encourages us to be firmly planted on the absolute faithfulness of God.

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The Essence of Our Faith

When we become a committed follower of Jesus we enter into a realm of faith that is unique to every other religion.  Its uniqueness is expressed in its essence.  Essence is defined by Websters as “the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something”.

I love the Bible and believe it to be a living book that is the inspired, infallible and inerrant Word of God.  By reading and heeding its instruction it gives me guidance, comfort, gems of wisdom and a worldview to live by.  But as important as the Scriptures are to my daily life it is not the essence of my faith. 

Prayer is something I practice daily.  Sometimes I set aside a block of time to pray and sometimes I pray a lot of little prayers during my daily routine. Prayer keeps me connected to my Heavenly Father. I pray to understand the will of God for my life.  I sometimes pray for healing, for wisdom, discernment and even for a miracle.  Prayer is a vital element in my daily communication with Heaven.  As important as prayer is to my life, it is not the essence of my faith.

I love to fellowship with my Christian brothers and sisters.  In a way, it’s like having a foretaste of  Heaven.  We are on the same page, we enjoy the same Lord and we base and plan our lives on Kingdom principles.  As much as we enjoy going to church and good Christian fellowship, it’s not the essence of my faith.

The Risen Savior is the essence of our faith

The unique aspect of our faith is the risen Christ.  Jesus’ virgin birth, his sinless life and his sacrificial death on the cross mean little without his bodily resurrection.  Rising from the dead was the divine trump card. In that one act, Jesus became victor over death, hell, and the grave. The resurrection gives “indispensable quality” to our faith.  No other religion can claim their teacher and leader rose from the dead.

The resurrection gives authority and validity to the Bible.  The Scriptures predicted that a Savior would be born and he would be rejected by those He came to save. The Scriptures record that He would be falsely accused and murdered. Then he would rise from the dead three days later.  All this happened just at the Scriptures recorded centuries earlier. 

Because Jesus taught us the value of prayer and how to pray, we can now “come boldly to the throne room of heaven”.( Hebrews 4:16 )  Prayer takes on a new power and meaning.  The resurrection enabled the Holy Spirit to indwell every believer.  We now have divine guidance who teaches us how to pray, illumines the Scripture and then convicts us of our sin so that we can maintain continual fellowship with our Heavenly Father.

The resurrection gives us a new identity and a new power.  Jeremiah wrote about this “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. (Jeremiah 31 NLT)  Because of the resurrection, we can now be indwelt by the risen savior. Jesus prayed just before he was taken up to heaven.  

“I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.”(John 17:20-21)

Because of the risen Savior we now have oneness with Christ.  The moment we are born again we are placed into Christ and Christ is placed into us.  That means wherever we go Christ goes with us. But it also means wherever Christ is (at the right hand of the Father) we are also.

“Even  when we were dead in our transgressions,  (God) made us alive together with Christ ( By grace you have been saved),  we are raised up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”  (Ephesians 2:5-6 NAS)

Bottom Line

The essence of our faith is the resurrection. The resurrection gives the Scripture further credibility, it gives prayer its power, and it creates oneness with other believers.  Our faith is more than just a religious creed and a social gathering. Our faith is a relationship that was made possible because of the risen Jesus. He became victor over death, sin, hell and the grave. His resurrection gave us an identity that has a connection to an eternal, heavenly home.  

The resurrection is not just an Easter Holiday, it is the very essence of our faith.  Take time today to rejoice in your salvation made possible by the Cross and sealed by the resurrection. Because He lives we can now live. 

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Living in the Father’s Love

Love trumps every human emotion. Anger separates and alienates us from those we care about the most. Jealousy becomes possessive behavior that drives our loved ones away. Pride keeps us from being real, and it sets up a wall that prevents us from developing transparent relationships. But our Heavenly Father’s love sets us free and breaks down all those barriers. God’s love helps us establish lasting relationships that binds our hearts with others.

However, administering this love has a divine order. First, we must be able to receive love before we can adequately give it to others. God wired us to be purveyors of His love, but he knew in and of ourselves that we lack the capacity to give continual love. That’s the reason He sent Jesus to provide the ultimate act of love. Jesus died in our place on the cross in order that we can become a child of God and then be a receiver of the Father’s love.

God not only wants us to be continual recipients of the Father’s love, but He wants us to learn to live and walk in His love. How do we do that? We must be a willing receiver of His divine love. It’s more than accepting Jesus as your Savior. It involves an act of the will. We go the next step in our spiritual growth by abandoning our life to Him we are declaring “I am all in, and committed to serving God all the days of my life.” When you do that, there is an exchange that takes place, you exchange your self-centered, self-directed life for His life. It’s an acknowledgement that you can’t live your life in your own strength. You need Christ’s divine life in you for direction, wisdom and guidance.

When we learn to live “in the Father’s love” several things happen.

1. We give up the idea that our goodness controls the way God treats us. You abandon the idea that if you do your part, then He will do His part. God always does His part because He always has His hand in your life. God promises us that “He will never leave nor forsake us.” (Hebrews 13:5)

2. We would let Him have His way with us so that we can become more like Him. He always knows what is best for us. “ God causes all things to work together…” (Romans 8:28)

3. God will set us free from those things in which we get our security. “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5)

4. You will see that suffering is God’s way of setting us free so we can follow Him at a deeper level. ”Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself alone” (John 12:24)

5. You will learn that walking in God’s love is enough. “We are made complete in Him” (Colossians 2:10)

6. God will increase your “love capacity” so you can become a giver of His love to others.

Bottom Line

God loves you more than the world could ever love you. His love is pure, unconditional and abundant. Living and resting in His love is the best place a follower of Jesus can dwell. Abiding in His love is not a formula or a religious ritual. It is not a list of “do’s and don’ts”. But its a gift from God as we yield every aspect of our lives to His control. So give up, surrender and then abide and walk in His sweet love.

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The Remedy For Our Sin

“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16 NASB)

I believe every true follower of Christ experiences defeat and spiritual setbacks in their walk with God. However, I am convinced that our success as followers of Christ is not dependent upon how few times we sin, but how many times we run to God to take advantage of His mercy and cleansing.

We all sin and need God’s mercy. It’s when we draw on that mercy that we develop a dependence on God. By having a sensitive heart toward sin, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and pushes us toward repentance. Because God understands our weakness and temptation toward sin, He gladly receives our confession/repentance (that’s mercy), and then gives us strength to overcome sin (that’s Grace).

One of the rewarding parts of my twenty plus years of counseling was the opportunity to share this truth with my counselees. I found many believers were carrying around a lifetime of guilt. Their continual failure to measure up to what they perceived as God’s standard brought frustration. Therefore, they just stopped bringing their sin to God for forgiveness because they knew they would fail again. Their concept of the Christian life was based on trying to measure up rather than being dependent upon God’s grace and mercy. We know where that way of thinking comes from; it comes from the enemy of our soul.

There must an effort on our part to “set our mind on things above” (Colossians 3), but beyond that, one of God’s objectives when we continue to fail and fall short is to drive us to Him. He wants us to live every moment dependent upon Him. He wants us to become Holy Spirit sensitive to sin. Every time we sin, every cross word we say in anger, every impure thought, He wants us to immediately be aware that we have offended Him.

By becoming sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s conviction, we will find that there is something supernatural at play here. It’s like God is screaming out to us that He is most willing to give us mercy (that is to forgive and cleanse us), and then He will give us the ability to be victorious over future sin.

Bottom Line

Building a “victorious resume” depends upon how we respond to our present sin. God never intended for us to carry around a weight of sin. He has provided a spiritual relief valve if we will become Holy Spirit sensitive by taking every thought captive to obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). That will lead to a greater sensitivity to hearing God’s voice in every area of your life.

The Lord longs to have intimate fellowship with His children. He wants to reveal more of Himself if we will be willing to let go of more of ourselves. It would be good for us to remember the old saying, “the water of life rarely flows through a dirty vessel”.

Begin today by asking the Lord to help you develop Holy Spirit sensitivity toward sin, and then when you sense you have sinned just “come with confidence to the throne room of grace, so that (you) may find grace and help in the time of need.”

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Six Spiritual Truths that Guide My Life – Part 1

1. I will live with the daily assurance that God loves me.

Knowing you are loved is one of the greatest needs humans possess. Knowing you are loved by someone, no matter what, is a basic God-given need. God wired us that way, to have an ever longing need to feel loved and accepted. He designed us that way in order that we may be driven to get our need of belongingess and love from Him.

Throughout Scripture we are told how God loves us and constantly cares for us, even more than the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. (Matthew 6). I know His love is constant and absolute because His love is a “vested love” because I am in Christ. God can never “unlove” us. Because we are in Christ, to stop loving us He would have to stop loving Christ.

2. I know God has a path for me.

All my Christian life I have heard the phrase, “God has a plan for your life.” It has become such a common place saying that most people glaze over when they hear it. But I think God’s plan goes deeper than the generic saying. God created us with a purpose in mind and a path to walk. The path includes lots of choices along the way, and it may include several different places we live and things that we do.

I don’t believe that there is a difference in the secular and the sacred. To a follower of Christ, everything is sacred. Your occupation, who you marry, how you train your children, where you live, how you spend your spare time is all sacred. There may be phases of your life you want to forget or do over, but as a committed follower of Christ, God is at work in and through you accomplishing His divine purpose.

Through the sovereignty of God, He opens and closes doors dependent upon His end purpose for you. You may think a certain part of your life was a failure, but God had you there for a divine purpose for a specific time in history. That even means your screw-ups and sin would somehow be woven into His overall purpose.

3. Trust God Completely.

Some prefer to say “put God first” but I think a more accurate phrase would be, “trust God completely.” Learning to trust God is a lifelong learning experience. As we go through the different phases of life, I am convinced that God’s intention for us is to grow in our level of trust.

New levels of trust are reached when we go through a trial or a difficult issue. Those things that cause you to be out of control when you were in the beginning of your trust level, is now just a little bump in the road. The more difficult the trial, the greater the trust level.

Sometimes we misunderstand the passage in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able to bear.” Some believers think that nothing we deem unbearable will ever come our way, but that is not true. He will sometimes allow you to go through trials that you know you can’t handle. Matter of fact, you may even feel that you had rather die than go through the trial.

When God allows some seemingly, unbearable circumstance in our life it may seem we can’t bear it. But God is faithful to His Word. The rest of the above passage says, “…but He will provide a way of escape in order that you can bear it.”

God is stretching your trust level. He wants us to go through things that put you out of control. Sometimes those things will shake our faith and cause us to question all that we believe. He wants us to have no place to turn for help but Him. That increases our trust level.

Bottom Line

This does three things for me.
1. When I have an unshakable assurance that God loves me I can run to Him with confidence that He loves and accepts me. That creates a state of rest and peace, even when the storm is howling.

2. Knowing that God has a path for me allows me to approach everyday as a new day. A new day where God can reveal Himself to me in a new and fresh way. Even though sometimes I can’t see it or feel it, I know He is at work in me manifesting Christ’s life to the world.

3. Learning a new level of trust creates a new level of fellowship with the Father. There is an inner circle of fellowship with the Father for those who are willing to have a greater level of trust.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path. “ (Proverbs 3:5)

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Jesus is Never Shocked

Do you realize that Jesus is never shocked at what people do or believe? The New Testament is full of examples of His lack of shock-ability. That’s because Jesus looks beyond what we do or believe in order to show us His love. His major quest is to build a relationship with man, not to judge him for his behavior.

Jesus knew Zaccheus was a thief and a crooked tax collector. He he told Zaccheus to come down from the tree because, “I’m staying at your house tonight.” (Luke 19:5). That one act changed Zaccheus forever; he now had a relationship with God.

When Jesus saw the Samaritan women at the well He wasn’t shocked at her sin. He looked beyond her five marriages and saw her emptiness. He knew she was living with a man and not married, but looked past her present sin and saw the deep longing of her heart. (John 4) He pressed beyond the cultural taboo of speaking to a Samaritan because He cared more about relationship than He did religious practice.

When Jesus dined with Simon the Pharisee and his friends it was evident that Simon’s friends had come to judge Jesus rather than to learn from Him. (Luke 7:36) As the meal was proceeding, an immoral woman crashed the party. Luke writes that she had lived a sinful life.(v37)

Apparently those at the table knew of her reputation for she felt judged and condemned. Yet her longing for peace and redemption drove her to risk further humiliation. For her to take this risk she may have thought that this was her last hope of obtaining God’s forgiveness and mercy.

As she stood at Jesus feet her shame and hope drove her to her knees. Then as an act of humility she began to wash Jesus feet with her tears of repentance. She then took out a bottle of oil mixed with perfume and began to anoint and kiss His feet as her act of worship.

The Pharisees looked on in disbelief that Jesus would allow this sinful woman to wash His feet with her tears. Simon lashed out in contempt, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is, that she is a sinner.” (V 39)

Simon thought Jesus should be shocked at this scandalous woman’s attempt to get his attention. But He wasn’t shocked; He knew her deepest need for forgiveness and restoration. He was moved by her faith and her courage to risk everything just to be touched by God. He could see beyond her sin and visualize a restored life and a relationship as a child of God.

You see, it’s about the heart. Jesus always looks at the heart. Jesus confronted the unloving hearts of His host and friends while this woman demonstrated a heart overflowing with love. Jesus said, “Simon, I have something to tell you” (v. 40).

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denari, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied,“I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,”

Then He turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:41–47)

Jesus is never shocked because He is able to look beyond our messed up lives. He forgives us, restores us and then floods our heart with His great love. Let’s bask in His great love.