My new favorite verse

    One of the most of quoted books in the New Testament is the book of Isaiah.  Isaiah had quite a bit to say about Jesus.  Even though, his ministry started around 739 B.C. before Christ.  Yet, he seems to barely be able to write a chapter without mentioning Jesus. 
    A verse that came to mind today is "The steadfast of mind Thou wilt keep in perfect peace.  Because he trusts in Thee." Isaiah 26:3.  It made me think about why it is that so many people, including many christians don't appear in the least to be experiencing peace.  Is it possible that our minds and hearts are not reflecting and focused on Him and His promises.  It is too often that we are focused instead on our circumstances rather than Jesus.  You will notice that this promise is for those who "trust" in Him and not themselves.
     I'm really glad I read this passage because I needed it.  It seems to me that my day is much better when I start it with spending time with God and focusing on Him.  It makes me wonder if this day was "better" what was worse going to look like?  You may think that on a busy day you don't have time to spend with God, but from what I have experienced the busier I get the more I need to make the time to spend with Him.  I need it because it is too easy to lose my cool and say something I will regret  or get angry or gossip or something like that.  It is too easy to walk in the flesh and forget about focusing on Christ.  I need to be reminded daily and sometimes hourly to trust Him.  As Jesus told his disciples, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.  Yes, we are very weak.
    In that same chapter, I noticed a promise also for the future that is pretty amazing when you think about it.  In Isaiah 26:19 it says, "Your dead will live; Their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy, For your dew is as the dew of the dawn. And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits."  I thought about that as I was driving by a graveyard, that one day the spirits would rise up out of the earth and rejoice that Jesus has resurrected them and that God's power is great enough to do that.  That maybe my trust is God is too small and that on the tough days he stretches me because he wants me to grow up and mature in my faith in Him and remember how great he really is.
  

3 Important truths

  If I had just a few things to say about the truths of the gospel that I would want anyone to know I could boil it down to a couple of truths that have changed my life and gave me hope time and time again.  There are three truths that I want to mention:

1. God loves you.  There is nothing more important for you to remember.  God is on your side.  He is for you.  He is totally and completely in love with you with a love that is not measureable.  You can't fathom it or contain it.  And he feels that way about your neighbors and relatives and everyone else as well.  He loves the unloveable and He loves the people who are easy to love.  Love is who God is.  Your Creator loves you enough to send Jesus to die for you.  You are that important to Him.

2. God won't abandon you.  Sometimes it feels like God left the building.  Sometimes life throws us curve balls.  We end up wondering if God was asleep for a while and didn't notice.  Our enemies start to laugh at us.  We end up falling on our faces.  But, God is going to have the last laugh one day.  He is not asleep.  He sees everything and He didn't leave the building.  He is very much on his throne.  If life is unfair, remember that God is fair and He is with you even when you have forgotten Him.

3. God is anxious to forgive you.  He wants to cleanse you from every sin and to wash you clean and make you into a new creation.  Whatever it is you have done, God's grace is greater than your weaknesses, your regrets, your stupidity, your errors in judgment, your faults.  God doesn't ignore your faults and sometimes there are consequences on this earth for those things, but as 1 John 1:9 says, He is faithful to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from our unrighteousness and He is anxious to forgive you each day and each time you ask.  Jesus' blood is enough to cover all your sins.

This may seem simple to you, but these truths can change your life if you get them deep into your heart and head.

Lessons this week

    I have been reading the Bible more this week and I wanted to take a minute to share with you some lessons learned this week.  The first thing that was reinforced to me is that prayer is about my getting on  God's plan and not His getting on mine.  If you recall, in Matthew 7:11 says, "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in Heaven give what is good to those who ask Him?"  This verse tells me that it is not God's inability to answer that sometimes leads to a delay in answered prayer.  Sometimes it may be a matter of what I am praying for or the fact that God and I are not on the same page in the playbook.
     In his book "Effective Biblical Counseling" Dr. Larry Crabb has a section about what it means to be a christian counselor  He talks about how many people, including many christians think the main objective in life is to "be happy".  While I don't think that God has called me to be the next Jeremiah (often called the "weeping prophet"), I do think that this is true.  Many christians do not present themselves as having a biblical viewpoint.  We are influenced and have been influenced by the world.  And that is something that as we pray and seek God's face and get into the word that God has a chance to transform.  For we need to be transformed and renewed in our thinking (Romans 12:2).
    The fact is, that scripture teaches us that God's priorities are not ours and that God has a very different way of thinking that we do.  In Isaiah 55:8-9 it says, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth. So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts."  So how much higher is the heavens than the earth?  The answer, of course, is that they are infinitely higher.  We can even fathom the width or breath of the heavens and so it is with God's thoughts being so much greater than ours.
    Not only are God's thoughts higher than ours, but it is clear he has a greater agenda than ours.  Sometimes prayer can be used as almost like drive through ordering.  I heard a preacher one day say that modern christians want God the same way they want a hamburger at McDonald's: fast, hot and cheap.  But, God's desire for us is transformation into the character of Christlikeness.  This is his ongoing mission in my life, my sanctification.  This happens, as I spend time with Christ and surrender to Him each part of my life.  Sometimes a byproduct of this is contentment and peace and sometimes it is just plain hard.  But, the goal is not happiness, the goal is Christlikeness. 
    This is one of the first lessons that the people of God had to learn about the nature of God, that God is holy.  When Moses encountered God on the mountain, God told Moses to take off his sandals.  He spoke to the people in fire and thunder and in power and declared himself to be holy.  Then, he told them that they would need to reflect that they know him by living holy lives.  In one of the hardest to read books of the Bible, Leviticus, it says this in Lev 11:45 "For I am the Lord, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy."  He told them this lesson over and over again for over 40 years of wandering and sadly, most of them never learned.   He said that his people, who are called by His name are to be different, sanctified (set apart) and holy.  Too often, we simply look like the world, when God has called us to be transformed.
    I think this is one of the main reasons the church today is really powerless, at least in America it appears to be, while in other parts of the world such as China the spirit of God is moving and thousands upon thousands are being saved.  God simply doesn't bless our plans.  Rather, he calls us to get on his plan and He will wait until we do so.  
    "And My people who are called by My name humble themlselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

I'm back

    If you've been following this blog for a while, you know I have not written much lately.  This is because a few months ago I started working on my Masters in Counseling degree.  This coming Friday I will actually finish two more classes and will have a total of 12 hours completed.  The program is a 60 hour program.  I will try and be a little more faithful in writing on here.
    My last two classes have been on multicultural competence and ethics and counselor identity.  It has been an interesting semester as I have studied another culture and learned more about the importance of following a code of ethics.  The last week, we looked at couple counseling and group therapy.
    One of the videos I watched recently showed two students at Liberty, one of who is from Puerto Rico and the other from Japan.  The student from Japan had only been in the U.S. about a year.  He mentioned that students here in the U.S. are much more assertive in talking in class.  Also, he mentioned that the church was one place that he felt like transcended culture.  Due to the different cultures he felt very, very different from everyone else, but in the church he felt accepted.
     I think it is a very good example of how the church can transcend race and socioeconomic issues and bring people together.  Unfortunately, in many cases it does not bring people together.   Whether it is the senior adults not appreciating the youth or the youth not appreciating the traditions from the past or whatever it is.  The church sometimes appears to be just one more social club that divides people into categories.   But, then we can look at Jesus and see that he had a whole different set of categories than we do.  He was willing for prostitutes and tax collectors and even Pharisees to come listen to him.  He didn't turn people away because of what they had done.  He didn't just judge and condemn people because they didn't act like he did.  More than anything, Jesus loved people of all sizes and shapes and backgrounds.

         There is a story in John 4 about one day when Jesus stopped by a well.  It was in the heat of the day and Jesus and his followers had been traveling.  A woman came to the well near where he sat with the intention of drawing water.  She was a woman with a history and was probably trying to avoid the other women in town by coming to the well in the middle of the day.  She was shocked that Jesus would even speak with her.  She was probably more shocked when he told her he knew she had had five husbands and the one she was with now she wasn't married to.
      My point is, that Jesus spoke to her anyway, without condemning her.  He did more than that though, he offered her and anyone who would call on him "living water" (John 4:14).  This reminds me of something I said one of the first times I preached back in 2001.  I said, "where sin is great, grace is greater."  That is the way that God treats us, with grace and mercy.