Friday, February 28, 2014

344. He's The Only Place You Can Turn



Were else are you going to go besides Jesus? You have no other choice. There is no plan B. Have you learned this yet? It takes some people longer than others to figure this out. It has taken me my entire life and even though it is completely obvious, I still sometimes find myself straining against the inevitable truth. Jesus is our only hope. He’s our only refuge. He’s our only real help. When you’re a little kid, your parents are your whole world. They provide for you, teach you and love you but at some point they let you down or lose your trust. You make friends you would die for, but they can’t measure up, right? You fall in love, but your heart gets broken. The same thing happens with siblings, teachers, pastors, and on and on. It’s as if all of life is pushing you, prodding you forward through a tunnel that keeps getting smaller and smaller until there is only one point of light - one final conclusion. Along the way you find out the alarming and disorienting truth that you can’t even rely on yourself. You aren’t enough. Money doesn’t satisfy. Sex doesn’t fill you up. Achievement, prosperity, comfort and fun are not good enough on their own. At their best they merely point toward something else - something deeper. When the ceiling caves in and the bottom drops out on your life, there is only one place to go. There is only one person to turn to. If you haven’t learned this yet, just keep living. As Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” In the end, you will find He’s all we have and He’s far more than enough.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

343. He Doesn't Actually Want You To Be Enough



So many people are working so hard to be enough. They want to be good enough, holy enough, spiritual enough, strong enough, tough enough and resilient enough. It’s natural. We want to be able to please God on our own steam. We want to be able to clean up our wrongs all by ourselves. We want to be able to earn our way and we want to be able to map out the course so that we can demonstrate exactly how we got there. In short, we want to be able. But there are two huge problems with this completely understandable desire of ours. The first problem is something we all find out sooner or later. It’s a lesson that hurts to learn, but is unavoidable. We find out we are not able. We don’t have what it takes. We can’t cover up our wrongs. We can’t stop doing wrong things. What’s more, we can’t even stop wanting to do wrong things. We’re weak and we don’t have the formula or the will power for true, lasting and total change. The second problem with us wanting to be enough is kind of surprising, but when you embrace it, everything changes for the better. You see, Jesus doesn’t want you to be enough. He doesn’t expect you to be strong or able and He would much rather you be weak and needy. When you accept the fact that you’re not enough and ask Jesus to help you, an amazing thing happens - you get set free by your dependence. You’re not enough, but Jesus is. He wants to supply what you don’t have. He wants to fill you and make you everything you were made to be.

Friday, February 21, 2014

342. He Wants Us To Grow Down



What does it take to really know God more deeply? Can you do it? Do you personally have what it takes? Can anyone figure it out, or is it one of those things that’s only available to a select few? Do you need a degree from a seminary? If you want to be closer to the Lord, do you have to be a theological powerhouse who has read all the right books and can break down all the scholarly secrets? Is God only interested in truly revealing Himself to folks who are upright and holy? Even as I ask these questions, something just doesn’t seem right, does it? When you actually read the Bible and watch the life and ministry of Jesus, you see something totally different. Jesus didn’t surround Himself with a bunch of high born scholars. He didn’t reserve the good stuff for the people who were following all the rules. In fact, the biggest fights Jesus got into were with the so-called holy and righteous guys who had all the religious degrees and knew all the answers. Jesus was frustrated and angry with that crowd, calling them a bunch of “whitewashed tombs that look good on the outside but were filled with rotting corpses.” He called them a “brood of vipers” and “sons of the devil.” Jesus worked miracles and taught all the secrets to outcasts, sinners, the poor and lonely. He said God was revealing Himself to little children and hiding things from the wise. If we want to get closer to God and know Him more, all we have to do is become like little kids. We need to grow down, not up. Needing Him is the key to knowing Him.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

341. He's Using All His Authority For Your Sake



Is God for you? Is He on your side? Does He listen to you? Does He work stuff out on your behalf? Does He ever employ all His limitless power for your personal benefit? I mean, when it comes to having connections with people who can pull strings, He’s the top of the ladder. He’s holding all the strings. The question is, are you on His radar at all? Sometimes it can feel as though God is doing His own thing and you are doing your own thing and there’s not a whole lot of crossover. Sometimes it can even feel as though the very universe itself is against you. It’s not just that God is otherwise engaged, but He’s after you - on your case. Is that the way it is, or is God up to something else? Right before Jesus ascended into Heaven, He told His disciples He had all the authority in Heaven and earth. He said it was given to Him. That word we have translated ‘authority’ can mean power, right, jurisdiction, dominion or to be in charge. Put all those words in a blender and Jesus said He had it all. He is ultimately running the whole show. In John chapter 10, Jesus used that same word and told us what He would do with all that power and right to wield it. He said He had authority to lay His life down. That’s what happens when you hand Jesus the keys to control everything in the universe - He lays His life down. He died on purpose because He can. He died on purpose because of His love for you. Every calculated movement of His limitless authority was aimed at rescuing you.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

340. He Answers For Us



Do you ever wish you could make God answer for some of His decisions? Go ahead, be honest about that. I know it probably feels like we’re treading on dangerous ground here. You may be wondering whether or not you’re even allowed to ask such questions. God is the Almighty One - how could we dare to insist that He answer us about the things He has done? And yet, we’ve all thought this way. At some point, you’ve surveyed the landscape of your own life and the things God has allowed and thought to yourself - “Why in the world did that have to happen? Why would God do this to me?” The Old Testament book of Job is about a man who lost everything and tried to figure out what it means to know God in the midst of devastation, depression and heartbreak. In one of Job’s rants, He says He wishes He could call God to account, but how can He? As Job points out, “He is not a mere mortal like me, that I might answer Him, that we might confront each other in court.” In other words, Job wants to sue God, but he can’t because God is God and not a man. Except, God did become a man. Jesus was God in the flesh and He not only became a man, but He let men drag Him into court, though He was sinless. He let them falsely accuse and sentence Him to death. Jesus took our place, bearing the full penalty of our wrong, dying our death so we could live. We don’t always know why God allows what He does, but this much is true - He took the blame in our place because of love.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

339. He Feels Your Hurt Deep Down



Do you ever wonder how God feels about the way you struggle? Let’s face it - your life can be really hard sometimes and not all of your failings and inconsistencies are simply the result of your sin. You have pitfalls and stumbles that have nothing to do with you, but are just part of the unique difficulty of your life being lived in this fallen world. Sometimes you live those hard moments well and at other times, you don’t. I have talked to so many people who assume that God watches them face troubles and hurts with the air of an overbearing parent who is impossible to please. They assume God is disappointed unless we weather every storm with poise, grace and spiritual maturity. The thing is, when you watch Jesus in the Gospels, you find something altogether different. There’s a place in Matthew 9 that says, “When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” When Jesus looked at the problems and distress of the lives around Him, He wasn’t upset that those people weren’t living more victoriously. Rather, He felt for them. In fact, in the original language Matthew wrote this verse in, the word we have translated ‘compassion’ is a word that literally means “intestines.” Matthew was trying to tell us that Jesus felt for these people way down in His gut. Jesus’ compassion is so deep and real that for Him, it’s a physical reality. Your life is hard and sometimes you don’t handle it all that well. Know that when you are having a rough time, Jesus is on your side. He feels for you more than you can imagine.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

338. He's Growing You Up



Have you ever felt like religion was just too controlling? If you grew up in certain types of churches, you probably know exactly what I mean. All you heard the whole time was “do this,” “wear this,” “stop that” and of course, “don’t ask why.” For a lot of people, their experience with God has been all about living a certain way in order to be acceptable to Him - trying to keep in step and stay clean so that He will look down on your life and give His approval. It turns out that being acceptable to God isn’t really about your behavior at all. We can’t live this thing so clean and right that we are acceptable to Him, so He made a way for us in spite of our weakness. Jesus gave His life to offer us the thing we could never earn - a relationship with God where we’re completely acceptable to Him. That’s the Good News, and it’s completely free, regardless of what you’ve done or do. All you have to do is believe it. This message comes in like a hero, breaking down the door of the old, controlling way. Following all those rules (or trying to follow them) was like a security blanket. It was like being a little kid and crossing the street holding the hand of a grown-up. Paul says the old rules were like a guardian, but Jesus came and now it’s time to grow up, turn loose of that controlling hand and cross the street. Believing Jesus loves me and God accepts me is growing up and leaving the guardian. You don’t need to live right to be good enough. All you need is Jesus, and you have Him.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

337. He Has More For You Than You Think



I used to think a life with God in it would be less life. I thought life with God would mean a limited, restricted, lame sort of life. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever thought giving your life over to God would mean you were somehow giving up on fun and fullness and somehow settling for less? I think we assume this kind of thing because we misunderstand who God is and what He cares about. We assume God exists to stifle and water down our desires, when the truth is, God invented life. He created us with our desires and rather than water them down, God wants to point them in the right direction so they can grow deeper and more fulfilling than we could even imagine. One time Jesus told Simon to take his boat out into deep water to go fishing. Simon’s entire life and livelihood was about fishing, and Jesus was going about it all wrong. Smart fishermen don’t fish in deep water in the heat of the day, but Jesus persisted. Jesus was taking Simon’s life and doing it His way. The result was amazing. They caught so many fish that the nets started to break. They called another boat in to help, but there were so many fish, both boats threatened to sink. Simon’s life Jesus’ way didn’t yield less, it yielded more - way more. Jesus is offering you a fulness and depth you’ve like you’ve never known. Walking with Him doesn’t limit your fun, it multiplies the meaning of fun thing and brings the depth of eternity into all you do. Your life lived Jesus’ way will overwhelm and overflow all that you thought was possible.