The Gospel of Love, Presented in Love

This morning I had a dream where I was part of a ministry that was presenting the Good news.  In this dream our presentation was so effective that people were being forced to deal with the reality of what they just observed, people being set free and healed.  

One funny thing happened in the midst of our presentation, we had a man come out dressed like a chicken, walk around a bit and then leave.  I was speaking at that moment and said,  "You can't ignore the fact that a man dressed as a chicken just came out, you can chose to not let your life be affected, but you can't deny what you just saw!   In the same way, you can't deny what you are seeing in front of you, people being set free and healed in Jesus name!"

As I was thinking back over the dream, upon waking, the thing that was most evident was that we were presenting the Gospel in a loving way!  We weren't in people's faces, we weren't barging into people's lives, we were presenting the Gospel of Grace, proclaiming that God loved these people and then letting God demonstrate His love for them by affecting their lives in sometimes radical ways, like healing.  We were effectively presenting the Gospel of God's Love in a loving way and people couldn't deny what they were seeing.

I was reminded of the following verses, specifically verse 14 from Matthew 14:13-14 NIV:

[13] "When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. [14] When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick."

Jesus' primary motivation here is compassion, and it results in Him healing their sick!  What a great demonstration of the Gospel of God's Love, demonstrated through a loving encounter with God's authority and power!  

Oh, that we would represent God's love for all we meet in much the same way!  Oh, that we would be overwhelmed with God's love for His people!  Oh, that our motivation would be loving others the way we have experienced His love ourselves!  In fact, now that I think about it, that is exactly what Jesus said,  “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” ( John 13:34-35 NIV )

Lord, help us to demonstrate Your love for others, by loving them and having compassion on them, healing them and setting them free in Your name!

Amen and Amen!

Who Am I Pleasing?

This morning I was reading through Paul's letter the Galatians, and came across a single verse that really made me think. Paul is obviously responding to some comments he heard concerning his ministry, how he handled himself, and the comments weren't good.  He was defending the Gospel of Christ, the Gospel he preached, and then he added this line - Galatians 1:10 NIV: 

[10] "Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ."

It is such an interesting statement, and although I have read this many times, today it grabbed my attention.   Paul is saying he used to live his life to please people, but that he was now only concerned about pleasing the Lord, and the two were mutually exclusive of one another.  

Isn't that interesting?  

Isn't that a bit of an over-reaction?

That last statement is the one my flesh makes, because I do want to please people!  However, to place greater priority on pleasing people, versus pleasing the Lord, means I am elevating people's opinions over the Lord's, and essentially making that an idol.  I am choosing to worship people's opinions of me... dang that is UGLY.

We see it all around us these days, people who are "influencers" who are trying to get followers and likes on social media.  We are seeing people obsessing more and more over what others think, over "likes" and "shares" and payouts from ads.  We see the church becoming concerned with the same, trying to win people's hearts and attention by being flashy, or "with it".  The church wants to be relevant, but watering down the Gospel to do so is idolatry. 

Jesus was very clear about our relationship with the world (spirit of the age).  He said the following, as recorded in the Gospel written by Matthew 16:24-26 NIV:

[24] Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. [25] For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. [26] What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?"

Make no mistake, our souls are at stake.  Paul saw this in his own life, and embraced that radical pursuit of God.  

My flesh doesn't like this line of thinking at all!  I want comfort, and I want people to like me!  I don't want to take up my cross daily!  That is the truth according to my flesh.  However, I am choosing to live by the power of the Holy Spirit filling me and flowing through me.  I am choosing to tell my flesh NO, and turning towards the Lord!  I am not perfect, for sure, but I am dogged in my determination.   

I am encouraged this morning to continue to pursue the Lord, to make my life about Him, first and foremost.  I am encouraged to worship Him, and not people's opinions of me!  I am determined to live a life of love, laying down my life that I might love God, and love His sons and daughters to the best of my ability.  I am encouraged to monitor my heart, my affections and to make sure that they are set on Him, first and foremost!  

Amen and Amen!

Scatter The Embers, Fan The Flame

Last night I had an interesting dream about the church being scattered in an end-times persecution.  I do have some very interesting dreams at times.  Anyway, that got me thinking about the early church and the persecution that arose after Stephen's stoning, and how the church was scattered.  I thought I would spend some time reflecting on that this morning.  The record of this is brief and found in Acts 8:1-8,  and in Acts 11:19-21 NIV:

Chapter 8: [1]"And Saul approved of their killing him.

[2] On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. [2] Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. [3] But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. 

[4] Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. [5] Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there. [6] When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. [7] For with shrieks, impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. [8] So there was great joy in that city." 

-and-

Chapter 11:[19] "Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. [20] Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. [21] The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord."

One thing is immediately clear when reading these texts, the scattering did not stop people from preaching the Gospel, and while possibly afraid for their lives, they considered the Gospel of utmost importance.  The Christians were likely traveling in small groups, sometimes even alone, but were continuing to live their lives of faith and openly demonstrating the kingdom realities.  Maybe they thought they were out-running the persecution, but it clearly spread as well for earlier in Acts 9, we find that Saul was actually pursuing the Christians all the way to Damascus. 

Anyway, back to the reflection, because of my dream, my thoughts this morning were on the instructions the church received before leaving Jerusalem. We don't know anything about the specifics, but we can glean some insight from the previous verses.  That they were headed out to areas that were not strong-holds of Christiandom is clear, they were being sent or scattered to largely unreached peoples.  I have reflected previously on how this persecution actually allowed them to begin to fulfill the great commission found in Matt 28, and we can clearly see this in both sections.  Philip was preaching to Samaritans, and in Chapter 11 we see the Gospel being preached to the Greeks, both groups of people that would have been excluded with a Jew's only focus. Thus, we can conclude that in their final instructions, there was an encouragement to continue to bear witness to the Gospel, regardless of where you ended up.

Secondly, both of these sections are followed by help coming from Jerusalem, so we know that people were still in contact with one another, despite being separated by miles and miles, with no direct communication methods that we enjoy today.  There must have been some sort of communications network in tact, enabling person-to-person news to be communicated back to the home church in Jerusalem, and there must have been some direction around this given to people before they left.  I find this encouraging, for we could think that in the scattering, people were just left on their own, each left to their own concerns and struggles, and we find the opposite.  They were connected, they did have a sense of being a part of the Body of Christ, despite their travels. If we look back at Acts 2 and 4, we can see the type of community that was developed, they were very close, shared with one another and looked after one another.  This type of connected life was absolutely essential to the continued well-being of the Church, especially under persecution.  We would be well coached to make sure that we are encouraging a similar life connectedness in the church today!

As I was just thinking about this whole event, I saw an image of trying to put out a fire by spreading the embers all over, causing them to be separated from one another.  This is actually a fine method, unless the embers are spread into dry grass, or other highly flammable substances, in which case this scattering would result in multiple new fires.  I see here the enemy trying to stomp out the fire of the newly birthed church through persecution, and ending up spreading wildfire that would engulf the whole of the known world!  Whoops!  Oh that we would have the same fire burning in our hearts today, for clearly the world is dry and ready for the fire of God!

I was reminded of a couple of verses from Obadiah 1:17-18 NIV:

[17] "But on Mount Zion will be deliverance; it will be holy, and Jacob will possess his inheritance. 

[18] Jacob will be a fire and Joseph a flame; Esau will be stubble, and they will set him on fire and destroy him. 

There will be no survivors from Esau.” The Lord has spoken."

I like the imagery of Jacob being a fire and Joseph a flame, not for some sort of destruction, but rather for the rapid spread of the fire of passion for God!  The persecution of the church did exactly that, it spread the fire of God out amongst the Greeks, the Samaritans, and the whole world!   They heard in the words and passion for the Gospel, and saw the workings of the miracles and healings and this caught them on fire!

One wonders if when we pray for the Lord to fan the flames that sometimes He allows a scattering to better fan the flames into a bigger fire?!  The other thing that is evident is that the Church was encouraged by these new fires, and they sent those to help stoke the fires, and bring teaching and direction and guidance!  They weren't afraid to turn up the brightness, even with the persecution raging around them!  They understood they were about a world-changing effort and were encouraged by the continued growth in the very face of persecution.  This was not like the lost tribes of Israel where 10 tribes just seemed to disappear into the populations they were scattered to!  Instead of cowering in fear, and trying to blend into the communities in which they were hiding these early Christians instead proclaimed the Gospel, shining their light for all to see!   Oh, that we would have this same passion today!  

This morning I am encouraged to pray for the fire of the Holy Spirit to burn brighter in each of us.  I am encouraged to pray that the Lord might cause the fire of passion for Him to be spread!   I am encouraged that the plans of the enemy will back-fire and that which he tries to quench will instead turn into a wild-fire that sweeps the world! 

Amen, come Lord!

Greatly Blessed

This morning I am reflecting on the incredible blessings of our life.  Yesterday my reflection was on maintaining faith in the midst of difficulty, but today, as I thought through our life, I recognized that struggle and difficulty is just one perspective, a very real one, but certainly not the whole story. My honey likes to say that 'life is a matter of attitude' and attitude is how we choose to interpret our situation, based on our perspective, or what we are focused on.  

There are times I struggle to maintain my focus on the things that matter, as in this last week, when circumstances are changing fast and I was working hard to understand and adapt and overcome.  However, given a couple of days, I usually get my focus back and am able to change my perspective to view life with a clearer view.   

This morning, I am looking at our present situation and we are greatly blessed.  We have a warm and comfortable house, plenty of food, clean water and electricity and natural gas are readily available.  While we have some health struggles, we are both ambulatory, able to care for ourselves, able to do what we want, when we want.  We are not dependent on medicine or machines to keep us alive.  We have more luxury, more comfort than many of the people of the world.  We have wonderful neighbors, wonderful friends, and fantastic families.  We live peaceful lives, free of major contention, struggle, or even disagreements.  We attend a wonderful church with other like-minded believers and are able to meet freely, able to give voice to our faith.  We don't struggle to make ends meet, we don't struggle to find our next meal, we don't struggle to stay warm, or protect our belongings.  We live in a country that is the envy of many.  We have our own home, our own vehicles, our own phones, computers, appliances and whatever else we desire.  Our lives, in comparison to many people of the world, and most of history, are greatly blessed!  

When I think about the struggles of this past week, in comparison to all the blessings I am surrounded by, I realize they are not as important as they seemed, and that helps me to regain my focus on the more important things.  Sure my job is how I am presently provided for, how I feed my family and pay my bills, but in the greater scheme of things it is just my job, and I am sure I could find another.  What is more important are my relationships with the Lord, my wife, my kids, my family, and my friends!  In fact, if I took away all the physical comforts, my relationships would still qualify me as greatly blessed for they are the most valuable to me!  I may not communicate it well, but to me love, fellowship and friendship are the most important things in my life!  

I am reminded of a Psalm of David.  He is speaking of himself, the King, and if I replace "The King" with "Me" or "I" the following would be true for me, other than the Kingly stuff, like Gold Crowns, etc. .  - Psalm 21:1-7 NIV:

[1] "The king rejoices in your strength, Lord. How great is his joy in the victories you give! 

[2] You have granted him his heart's desire and have not withheld the request of his lips. 

[3] You came to greet him with rich blessings and placed a crown of pure gold on his head. 

[4] He asked you for life, and you gave it to him---length of days, for ever and ever. 

[5] Through the victories you gave, his glory is great; you have bestowed on him splendor and majesty. 

[6] Surely you have granted him unending blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence. 

[7] For the king trusts in the Lord; through the unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken."

Thank You Lord for Your great blessings!!

Holding On In Difficulty

This past week has been a surprise, and not in a good way, at work.  We had a difficult situation revealed and have been working to identify how to overcome a significant deficit that will result.  While this is a strange way to start a reflection on my faith, this situation is absolutely impacting my relationship with the Lord, my faith, my belief and my will as I press in to hold onto promises and directions given to me. 

Every job I have taken over the years has been the result of my pursuing the Lord's plan for me, and while it seems like I have, at times, made bad decisions, each one has been with a single purpose of trying to follow the Lord's direction.  During my last discernment process, the Lord asked me who I was willing to help succeed, as I was trying to decide between two companies.  It was the most definitive question as the two options were polar opposites, and the choice was easy.  That question is my driving purpose in my present position, and while I could be making more $$ in other positions, I am trusting His purposes for me here, knowing that my life purpose is about more than just my own gain, or well-being.  

I bring all this up to frame my reflection this morning, for while I am in this position by my own choice, and I believe by His direction, I find myself in a very difficult place.  My flesh says bail-out, find something with a better future, better benefits, better pay, less stress, etc.  I am hounded by feelings of failure, even though the situation is not my doing, and I certainly would like to take an easy out.  In the midst of this, I am choosing to stay the course, to trust that the Lord has a plan and that it is ultimately for not only my good, but for the good of the people I am working with as well.  

I have been reflecting on several different scriptures in my struggle, and it is interesting how many struggles there actually are in scripture. Everyone from Noah and Abraham, all the way to Paul and the other Apostles, experienced difficulty in their lives.  Struggle is not to supposed to be a surprise for us, nor the indication of failure or sin on one's behalf, but it is part of our human, and Christian experience.  If we look at Hebrews 11, we find the hall of fame of faith, people who believed in God in spite of the difficulties they encountered, and acted on that belief.  It is interesting, that the author of Hebrews notes that, 

"These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised" (Hebrews 11:39 NIV).   While this might seem like a very discouraging word, in each of the stories represented God did provide guidance, relationship and even blessing, it was just that there was always more, and each of the people in the list were looking towards the future towards Christ, without fully knowing or understanding what the fulfillment of that promise would look like.  

In a similar way, we are encouraged to look towards eternity, to our life as sons and daughters of God in relationship with Him.  There is more to our life than our terrestrial existence, and our eyes should be fixed on this greater reality.   Paul and John both write about eternal life, and how we are called to this, and gifted this by Christ.  Jesus constantly spoke about the Kingdom of God, and according to Peter this is an eternal kingdom, to which we are called (2Peter 1:11).  Jesus made the way for us to experience this eternal kingdom, enabling us to live with Him both now and eternally. He spoke of going back to the Father to prepare a place for us (John 14:2-3), so that He might bring us with him to that place.  

The tension in our lives is to live in the midst of our present reality, while looking towards the future, eternal reality.  We can't check out, for we have purpose and calling here, as well as the opportunity to experience some of that eternal kingdom, here on earth!  We must engage our faith, and act on our beliefs and trust that the Word of the Lord is true, regardless of our present situation.  Paul writes of how he was flogged, stoned, ship wrecked, hungry, thirsty, (2 Cor 11:24-27) and in all of this his faith was his anchor.  He believed, trusted and endured, and saw God do amazing things through his life, and witness.  His struggles didn't disqualify him, or indicate that God disapproved of him, but they were instead markers that pointed to the faithfulness of God in his life.

This morning I am encouraged to hold on, to press forward, to believe in God's promise, direction and faithfulness in spite of my circumstances.  I am encouraged to look at my situation as an opportunity for the Lord to move, to provide perspective, guidance and direction.  I am encouraged that by holding on to Him, in the midst of this struggle, I am strengthening my faith, and acting on my belief, both of which are good things.  

I know I certainly have not achieved everything I seem called to, but I am confident that as I turn my eyes to the Lord, He will see me through, and fulfill all His promises.  I am grateful for His peace in the midst of the struggle, and rather than complain about how this isn't what I signed up for, I can instead praise Him for His blessings and faithfulness, remembering how He has intervened in my life, over and over again.

Blessings!  -sam