Saturday, June 30, 2012

183. He's Like Food


Did you know that your food turns into you? I realize that’s kind of a weird thing to say, but it’s true. The old saying, “You are what you eat” turns out to be scientifically spot-on. I mean, yeah - some of the stuff we eat is ejected as waste, but you actually keep and use tons of everything you ingest! The food you eat goes into you and actually becomes you. The simple and complex sugar molecules that make up your food get broken down and processed into the energy you need to power the cells that keep your neurons firing, heart beating, blood pumping, muscles contracting and on and on. That’s why it’s so important to give your body what it needs. One time Jesus said something so strange that tons of the people who followed Him decided to turn away and leave Him. He said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life... for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.” Wow. That’s a pretty gross thing to say. Some folks say He was talking about communion, but this was years before the Last Supper ever happened. I think Jesus was saying that He’s like food because He’s what we need to live life, and He’s what we need every single day, all day long. If we take Him into our hearts, ingest His words, drink in His truth, we have the strength, energy and nourishment we need to live a new kind of life. Thing is, when you start to fill your heart up with Jesus, you get satisfied just like with a great meal. His ways are delicious. His message is satisfying. He’s everything you need to make it.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

182. He Still Works The Same Way


How do you stop certain sins that really get a hold on you? If you’re stuck in some cycle of wrong, how do you get out of it? We all know how it feels to mess up in the same area over and over again, right? The truth is, everyone knows how it feels; which means that you’re not alone and you’re not some freak if you’ve ever been stuck. In my opinion, we’ve all been there because we all try to break out of our cycles in the wrong way. See, when we come to know Jesus, we come weak, helpless and needing to be rescued. We know we don’t have what it takes to save ourselves, so we beg for His mercy and grace. Then, once we’re saved, we try to muscle our way through life. If we want to stop sinning, we try to load up a bunch of rules and guilt so that we clean up because it’s the ‘right thing to do’ or because we feel so bad about it. The problem is, it doesn’t work that way! Once we know Jesus, we’re told to get our act together and start living right, but we can’t! When Paul wrote the Galatians, he said, “After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” In other words, walking with Jesus should be exactly like coming to know Him in the first place. If you’re stuck in a sin, don’t just grit your teeth and try to stop. Go to Him like you did in the beginning. Tell Him you don’t have what it takes and that you need His forgiveness and grace. It still works the same way.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

181. He Declared Me Holy


I always thought I was in trouble with God. I knew I deserved to be punished and I always walked around through life sort of flinching - waiting on the hammer to fall. I grew up in church, so I knew the message of the Gospel. (Or at least, I thought I did) I knew that Jesus died to pay for my sins. I accepted Christ. I believed that He had died for me. I believed that He loved me, but there was this nagging discomfort in my faith. If I could have put my finger on it, I would have said that I believed that God was tired of me. After all, I sort of always continued to fall into the same sins over and over again. From God’s point-of-view, I was an impossibly frustrating and predictable sinner. Yes, Jesus died to pay my penalty and yes He loved me, but dang! My view of the Gospel made me feel like a dog that just can’t quite learn to be housebroken. The owner lets me live in the house, but I’m a disappointment, and I know it. The good news is, I was wrong about the Good News. The message of the Gospel is that not only did Jesus die to forgive me, but when I came to Him for forgiveness, He gave me something more: He gave me His own righteousness. God has declared me as Holy as Jesus Himself. That means that when God looks at my life, not only am I forgiven, but it’s as if I’ve lived every moment just as beautifully as Jesus would have done in my life. Wow! God’s not tired of me; He’s blown away by me! Now, that’s Good News.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

180 He's Reinterpreting Your Despair


Your life is going to have some heartbreak in it. There’s no way around it. Some things are going to happen that cause you unimaginable pain, and even the most upbeat person will sometimes feel the kind of hopelessness and desperation that makes them ask, “What’s the point of it all?” You’re going to lose people close to you. A dear friend will turn their back on you after all these years. You’ll face money troubles, health troubles and family struggles you would never have dreamed were possible. There is no way that a person can live a life in this world and be shielded from the kind of pain and suffering that threatens to hobble even the strongest faith. Maybe the worst part about this truth is the fact that there’s no way to prepare for it, because you don’t know what or when or had bad it will be when it comes. There is good news though: Jesus knows. He knows because He knows everything. He knows what’s coming and when. He knows how bad it will be and He also knows why it’s happening. When Jesus died, some of His best friends were deeply depressed and talking about it. The resurrected Jesus appeared and talked with them. They didn’t know it was Him. He told them that everything that happened to Him was part of a beautiful plan and had to happen. When they realized it was Jesus, they said, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us when He talked to us?” Jesus knows your pain. He’s using it to make you something truly amazing. One day, He will personally explain it to you - and your heart will be burning with joy and amazement at what God did.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

179. He's Unavoidable


Why is it that people who are filthy rich are also some of the most desperate, lonely and unhappy people on the planet? I mean, if someone is a multi-millionaire, they can get whatever they want. They can engineer their life according to their own pleasures and tastes. Why doesn’t that make people happy? We naturally assume that the way to be happy is to get our own way all the time, but it never really works as well as we think it would. The question is, why not!? What’s going on? Well, I can actually answer that question in one word - Cornerstone. That’s a word that Jesus used to describe Himself. A cornerstone was the most integral piece of a building’s structure. The whole thing was built around that stone and it was the most important part holding everything together. Jesus called Himself the Cornerstone because He built the universe. It operates according to His design. His life is an essential part of not only our survival, but also of our satisfaction. We can’t make it without Him, and life outside of His plan just doesn’t work at all. Jesus said that people have rejected Him, which is kind of like a building throwing out its’ own foundation. The whole thing will simply fall to pieces. We will either allow Jesus to break down and then rebuild us, or we will be crushed. Life only works with Him at the center of it. This is His universe and we can’t leave. That’s why serving people makes you happier than being selfish. That’s why laying your life down feels better than getting your way. You live in Jesus’ world - and that’s what His heart is like. He’s making us like Himself.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

178. He Wants To Be Bothered


When I was a kid, my sunday school teachers taught me how to pray. For those of you who grew up in church, you probably experienced something like what I’m talking about. We had to take off our hats, sit very still, keep our backs straight and our hands folded and then pray. And if this weren’t enough, there were all these formulas. I remember being in Middle school and being taught that when you pray, you spell out the word “ACTS” - Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. Wow. To be honest, that was so much trouble, that I basically never prayed. The funny thing is, if you actually read the Bible, Jesus didn’t talk about prayer like that at all. When He taught His followers about having a prayer life that is healthy and strong, He told a story about a widow who was trying to get justice out of a local judge. She pestered him and pestered him, pleading incessantly and finally the judge gave in. In the story, the judge says that he granted her request because she kept ‘bothering’ him and she was about to ‘wear him out.’ The Greek word we have translated ‘bother’ can also be translated, “beat up,” and the Greek word we have translated ‘wear out’ is a word that means to punch someone under the eye! In other words, Jesus said that a healthy prayer life is not about sitting straight, folding your hands and saying the right words. A healthy prayer life is one where you take the deepest needs of your heart to Almighty God and punch Him in the face with them. Throw those haymaker punches and just keep swinging! Jesus loves a knock-out punch prayer life.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

177. He Wants You To Be Fulfilled


Okay, what’s the deal? Does Jesus want my obedience, or does He want my heart? Which is it? Am I supposed to work really hard on trying to do the right thing, or do I simply trust in His grace and throw my behavior to the wind, because it’s simply not important? This feels like a weird thing to ask, but the Bible seems to want it both ways sometimes. I mean, we obviously need grace. We are too screwed up to earn anything. At the same time, Jesus does want us to follow Him. He wants us to put His teachings into practice and to make Him our King with our obedience. All of the Apostles actually started calling themselves, “The slaves of Christ.” One time, Jesus said that if you had a servant, you would expect him to do his duty. He feels that way about us. Why? Is Jesus some kind of egotistical dictator who just wants everyone bowing before Him? No. Jesus isn’t like that. He bore our sins to give us new life for free. He served us by dying for us. It just so happens that serving Him is the thing that will make us happier than anything else because He is so full of life and love. Obeying Jesus is the ticket to freedom and joy. It’s like my marriage. You see, I don’t cheat on my wife. I obey the rules of fidelity, but not because they’re the rules. I don’t cheat because I love my wife and a life of fidelity with her makes me happier than anything else ever could. Jesus wants your obedience, but it’s only because He knows what will make you most happy and fulfilled. 

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

176. He Can Handle What You Can't Control

Luke 12:25-26 How much time do you waste fretting over things you can't control? Everyone does it. Some folks spend thousands to try and slow down the aging process, even though there's nothing you can do in the end. It happens in almost every area of life. People stress over the guy who didn't ask them out or the job that didn't call them back. They lose sleep and rack their brains trying to figure out what the stock market or even the weather is going to do! In counseling-type situations, we often talk about identifying things you can and can't change so that you don't waste time agonizing over things you have no control over. You can't make your dad love you. You can't make your friend stop drinking. You can't give yourself a whole new body type. You can't go back in time to when things were good with that one guy. You can wish that one day didn't happen, but you can't change the fact that it did happen. It's important to identify the things you can't control so that you only work on things you actually can change, but it's also good for another reason: You find out what to pray for. You see, there may be things you can't change, but Jesus can. One time, He said, "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?" Things that are flat-out impossible for us are child's play for Jesus. If you can't control something, don't worry and fret and try to fix it. Just hand it over to the One who can.

Friday, June 1, 2012

175. He Loves Losers


You know how there are those people everyone likes? You know how those people are so magnetic that everyone wants to be with them? You know how it’s as if the center of gravity shifts when they come into a room and suddenly everyone is looking at them, listening to them, laughing at their jokes and hanging on their every word? Well, what if you’re not one of those people? What if you don’t really magnetize anyone? What if nobody really hangs on your every word? Have people ever made you feel like a total loser? Maybe somebody told you that you weren’t pretty enough. Maybe they said you weren’t smart enough or successful enough. It sucks, right? It can make you feel like you don’t belong here - like you just wish you mattered to someone. I know that feeling sucks. I know it feels lonesome and desperate, but there’s something really cool that you need to know: You matter to Jesus. He loves the so-called ‘losers.’ And when I say you matter to Him, I mean He has always loved you, always wanted you, hand-picked you to be His, left eternal bliss to come down here and lay down His life in torment just to make you His very own. Jesus thinks you are the coolest person who ever lived and if you were the only one He could save, He would have gone through all that hell for you. Once, a very uncool person that everyone hated named Zacchaeus went out on a limb to see Jesus. Jesus then shocked everyone by saying that He had come into the world to seek and save folks like Zacchaeus. You matter to Jesus more than anything in the world.