Month: August 2024

“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?” 2 Corinthians 13:5

This is Paul’s second letter to Corinth and he has had to address issues there before. He was planning on returning there and was hoping that the individuals in the church who were sinning would realize what they were doing and change. He wanted them to repent and start living according to their faith.

He told them to examine themselves to see if they were truly living out their faith or if they were just putting on a show for others. Having to have someone tell them they were sinning was not going to be as effective as them realizing it on their own. The same is true for us today. When we sin and we realize it, we tend to be harder on ourselves, have more guilt, feel more sorrow about the sin than when someone else has to point it out to us.

I am not saying that we should be carrying around guilt, but we become more invested in correcting our behavior and more committed to maintaining that change when we are the ones noticing that it is not in line with God’s will for our lives. Sometimes we don’t realize what we are doing and a leader or close friend will bring it to our attention. Hopefully they are confronting us in love and we are accepting of the intervention. Either way it happens, once we know we have sinned, we have a choice to change our behavior or not.

Some of the Corinthians were not only unaccepting of Paul’s intervention, they were challenging Paul as their leader. There are times when we do that very thing, either not accept the confrontation that what we are doing is sin or challenge the person as not being a person of authority to address us. We usually do this when we don’t want to admit our sin or we are not wanting to change our behaviors.

My encouragement for everyone today is for us to examine ourselves much the way that Paul told the Corinthians to examine themselves. Look at our thoughts, our actions and reactions and see if they are in line with what God wants for us. If they are then that is wonderful, but if they are not, then I pray that we will acknowledge them, ask for forgiveness and ask the Lord to help us change them.

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” Ephesians 1:7-8a NIV

In Him we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. Only through Jesus can we be saved, can we find redemption. We can not get redemption any other way.

Why do we need redemption? Because we are born into sin. Sin is a transgression against divine law, law that God has put into place. Not one of us can escape sin on our own and if we choose to live life here on earth in sin then we are choosing to live life after death separated for eternity from God.

The devil wants us to continue to live life captive to sin, rejecting Jesus as the Savior, the only One who can save us. If we choose to reject Jesus, then we are choosing to spend this life and the life after we die our physical death here on earth, in torment with the devil.

The other option is to choose to accept Jesus as our Savior and choose to spend life free of being captive to sin. Captive to sin no longer we are free to love Jesus, love others, and love ourselves the way that God intended us to love. With forgiveness we are able to build and grow a relationship with God, not based on fear but on love.

Our forgiveness, our redemption came with a heavy price though. It was only through His blood that our eternal cleansing was able to take place. Think about that for a minute….Jesus didn’t just say some words and we were redeemed, no He gave up His life for us so that the ultimate and final price was paid for our sins. He then took the power that the devil has over us and death away from him, enabling us to choose which life we want to live.

Which life do you want to live? One captive to sin and ending in eternal torment with the evil one, or one free from sin, devoted to Jesus, forgiven of your sins, and resulting in eternal life with God in heaven?

The choice really is yours!!! Which one do you choose today?

“’In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” Ephesians 4:26-27 NIV

Since I wrote the last 2 days about changing how we react to people, I thought that this would be a good verse to end with. Anger can be very destructive but it can also be productive. When a person allows anger to take over how they feel most of the time, or allow it to direct their other actions and interactions with those they are not angry with, it can be labeled as being destructive.

There are so many incidents in history where a person’s unwillingness to let go of anger has caused trauma, heartbreak, destruction and death to others who were not even involved with that person. People who are angry at everyone for whatever reason, usually don’t take their anger out on just one person, they lash out everywhere and at everyone.

Our verse for today instructs us to not sin when we are angry. How do we do that? When we feel anger, we have a choice. We can either let that anger build up inside of us and have it come out sideways, as I like to say, or we can address the source of the anger and deal with the problem. Keeping anger inside will simply eat you alive and do no one any good. When we keep anger inside and it builds then we have the possibility of sinning. Lashing out in anger with words or physical acts are some of the ways that we can sin.

The next part of the verse says to not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Obviously we cannot control the sun, so the part we can control is how we handle the anger. Again, being willing to deal with the problem head on and address the issue helps to defuse the anger. This needs to be done appropriately and without sinning, but when we do this we reduce the probability of sinning greatly.

The last part of the verse gives us a reason to take care of our feeling of anger and that is so the devil does not gain a foothold. What is a foothold? It is defined as a secure position especially a firm basis for further progress. So when the devil gains a foothold in our lives, he is establishing a firm basis that he is able to use to gain control of us.

Here’s an example, a person finds out that one of their friends lied to them. They are angry and don’t deal with the friend, instead they ignore the friend or worse call the friend names on social media. However, since they have not actually gone to the friend and talked about the situation, the hurt continues to build along with the anger. It takes them a while, but they are able to finally talk with their friend and work out the issue. You would think that the anger would be gone now, but because it took a while, that anger was not dealt with and started to grow inside of the person. The next time the friend does anything wrong, the person is immediately thrown back into that emotional state from before and the anger over this situation builds very quickly and this time is more intense. The devil tells the person that they are not able to trust the friend, even if the situation is completely different. The devil has a foothold on the person and it will take a while for the person to break free.

The devil will use any foothold he can get to try and keep us from doing God’s will. Let’s not give him any more leverage than he had when we were not saved yet. Is there any anger you need to deal with? Have you “stuffed” feelings deep down inside? Talk to God about it, He will help you to deal with them and break free from the footholds that the devil has on you.

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32

Yesterday I wrote about what we need to get rid of as Christians and today I want to write about what we should replace it with. I find it a disservice to someone to simply tell them what they need to get rid of or what they cannot do but not tell them what they could replace it with or what they can do instead.

Yesterday I wrote that we should do our best to change our attitudes, thoughts and actions from negative destructive ones such as bitterness, anger and malice. Today the verse we are looking at explains some of the ways we can think and act that are more in line with how Jesus approached situations.

Paul is explaining to the Christians at Ephesus that they should be kind to each other, which is being willing to have the hard conversations with each other but to do it in love in addition to being considerate and generous. Paul writes that being compassionate with each other is another way to change the thoughts they have about each other. Remember that they were a very diverse group of individuals. The third way that Paul talks about is to forgive each other, just like they were forgiven by Christ.

I don’t believe that being kind, compassionate or forgiving would have been a difficult mindset to adopt but they were facing attacks by the devil daily. They were a new church who had given up following the old Jewish laws and were trying to follow the teaching of Jesus and how He lived instead. The devil was trying his hardest to stop this group of “Christ followers” as quickly as possible.

As I wrote yesterday, when we accept Jesus and are saved, we are to begin changing our attitudes, values, thoughts and actions; however, that is when the devil begins to work the hardest against us trying to make sure that we don’t change any of those things. He wants to keep us exactly how we were before we were saved, thinking like the world thinks. So as a new Christian or a Christian who has decided to change how they think and act to be more in line with Christ, this can be one of the hardest parts of your life to change.

Changing from doing whatever you want on Sunday mornings to going to church is not very hard, giving an offering that you normally don’t give isn’t that difficult either, but changing how you think, what you value as important and how you act in situations and react to situations can be difficult. You are changing how you have thought about things your whole life.

The good news is that you are not alone in this transformation. We have Jesus, God the Father and the Holy Spirit to help us, we simply need to ask. We need to be willing to work on those areas and open to being led by God to think differently and act differently. It will be hard at times to change our immediate reaction or thought but we can do it with the help of God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Are you willing to give up the ways that you have thought and acted that are in line with the way the world thinks and acts and begin to think and act more like Jesus wants you to? You can do it and you are not alone in this change. I would suggest that you pray about it, that you find other Christians that you can surround yourself with so that you have additional encouragement and find a church that teaches Jesus so that you can be filled with spiritual food from the Bible.

Changing is hard but nothing is too hard for God.

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.”  Ephesians 4:31

When we give our lives to Jesus, we are supposed to change things about ourselves. We are to change our attitude, our values, our thoughts, our words, and our actions. The reason we are to change these things is because before we give our lives to Jesus, we are filled with fleshly desires. Our fleshly desires encourage us to think the way the world thinks. The world tells us that we should seek revenge when we have been hurt, we should become angry when we don’t get our own way, and we should talk about people, even spread lies about them to make ourselves look better than we are. This is not the way to think in the kingdom of God.

Obviously as sinners, we all participate in these thoughts and behaviors to varying degrees. Some people possess and express very little, if any, of some of these whereas others possess and express a larger amount of them. We are all different and we all need to work on how we handle our thoughts and behaviors. Once we give our lives to Jesus, these changes do not occur over night, we need to work on them, ask for help from God and give their control over us to Jesus.

In this verse, Paul was talking to the Christians in Ephesus and he was encouraging them to be united in their service to Christ. The church of Ephesus was diverse in multiple categories, there were married couples and widows, children and older people, wealthy people and poorer people, Jewish people and Gentiles, and people who were of higher status than others. While this diversity should have given the church at Ephesus a wonderful opportunity to be able to understand and work with individuals from all of those areas of life, it hindered them instead.

They were very used to being segregated in their economical status, their nationalities and their neighborhoods. The idea of a Jewish person working along side a Samaritan was unheard of and the Christians in Ephesus were struggling. There was fighting, there were arguments about who should be doing what based on their status or their ‘right’ to hold a position because of their nationality and there was bitterness as some of the Christians thought differently about division of assets.

When you put a diverse group together like this one, there are going to be challenges whether they are Christians or not, they are still humans with thoughts and feelings. That is when our individual work with Jesus begins, the moment we accept Jesus and then agree to work on ridding ourselves of the world’s way and adopting Jesus’s way of living.

Our growth as a Christian and the changing of our thoughts and actions such as bitterness, rage, slander, malice, anger and fighting are directly connected to each other. As we approach the throne of God and ask for help with these areas, we can choose to change our thoughts about others and how we interact with them. however our minds are complex and simply stopping being angry isn’t enough, we need to replace those thoughts with different thoughts so we don’t resume our old behaviors.

So what do we replace those thoughts and actions with? Come back tomorrow and find out………

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28 NIV

I want to start with the third word “know” which is different than “believe”. To know something is to be aware of that something and have facts about that thing. Believing is hoping for but knowing is conviction of truth. As Christians, we need to make sure we know when it comes to God and what He is capable of and not just believe. Because we know, we keep moving forward with God.

“In all things” means ALL, not some, not just a few, not this one and not that one, ALL things. All things includes every part of our lives, the good times and the bad times as we describe them. The good times when we feel we are being productive, successful, encouraged, happy, and our lives are moving in the direction we believe they are to be moving in. The bad times when we feel we are unproductive, failing, miserable and events in our lives are not what we want them to be.

“God works for the good” is a tricky part of the verse because our definition of good is not always the same as God’s definition. Our definition of good typically means that every moment of our lives will be stress free and without conflict. Which we all know is unrealistic, but we hope for it anyway. God works for the good can be described as God taking each and every situation we face, our reactions, the resolutions of those situations and weaves good through it so that His will is able to be completed. As His children, we know that His will is what is best for us, since He can see everything and knows everything.

“of those who love Him” is an obvious because as His children we love Him, we are following Him, and have declared Him as our Lord. For those who have not done that, He is not going out of His way to work things for good. Now, He will work things for good if His will is involved in the situation. There is nothing He can’t do and He will not have His will stopped. We also show our love by being obedient to His will.

“Who have been called according to His purpose”. We are all called but only some of us accept that call and come to the Lord. Only some of us have decided to follow God and only some of us have given our lives over to God. When we do this we are lining up our will with God’s will and we are trying to walk the path the way He wants us to walk.

We can not take this verse to mean that everything always works out for our good, the way we want everything to work out, we need to understand that God’s will is perfect and that He will work situations out to further His will.

“He is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God’s] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power.” Hebrews 1:3a AMP

I recently heard a teaching on this verse and it made me stand back and look at our world differently. Normally the focus of this verse is about the deity of Jesus, He is both man and God. That He paid the ultimate and final price for our sins, thereby purifying us. That when He was done He sat down to the right of God the Father, a position that was seen in Jesus’s time as a position of honor.

However, that is not what I wish to focus on, the bolded section of the verse is what I would like to discuss. The teaching I heard talked about how this section described the absolute power of God the Son. This world is held together by Jesus’s mighty word of power, He doesn’t even need to exhibit the power, just say the words. Our world is amazing. The stars stay in the sky because Jesus tells them to, the sea doesn’t over run the land because Jesus tells it to and all of the planets stay in their rotations because Jesus tells them to.

We have just the right amount of gravity to let us walk around without floating away or being stuck to the ground. The gravitational pull is perfect in that the sky doesn’t fall and the land or sea doesn’t float up to the sky. If the combination of oxygen and carbon monoxide was off just the slightest we wouldn’t be able to breath. If light moved any slower or faster, we wouldn’t be able to see it and if sound waves were shorter or longer, the experience of hearing would be different. That is how amazingly perfect our God made this world.

Our world is full of wonder and I hope that you can take some time today to stop and take it all in. Stop and look around you, pause and see all the wonders of God. God created all of this for you and me, for us!

“I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.” Psalm 63:4 NIV

David wrote these words to God as a way of telling God how thankful he was for God’s unchanging love. In the earlier verses, David finds himself in the wilderness running from men chasing him. During that time, he becomes tired, thirsty and hungry, so he uses those experiences as a way of describing to God how much he desired to praise Him and communicate with Him. David had a special relationship with God, his heart was wanting what God wanted.

Because David’s heart was for God, he wanted to praise God, and he talks about raising his hands in the name of the Lord. One position of worship that individuals used in Biblical times was raising their hands towards the heavens. It didn’t matter if they were standing, sitting or kneeling, raising their hands was a way that they praised God. There are people who use that same posture of worship and praise now.

Wanting to be expressive while you are praising God is a wonderful way to worship Him. It doesn’t matter what position you are in, where you are or who is around you, when you have the desire to worship God there should be nothing that holds you back. So go ahead and sing, dance and lift your hands if that is how you want to praise our wonderful God.

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10 NIV

In chapter 40, the previous chapter, Isaiah is talking to the Israelites about the comfort of God, and here he continues with that idea of God wanting to help and be there with them. God is saying to them ‘ if you are afraid, understand that I am here with you, and you don’t need to worry, because I am your God’. He goes on to ensure them that if they are weakened, He will give them strength and hold them up.

What an amazing verse from our Lord and Savior. The Creator of the entire world is concerning Himself with the people of earth, wanting to help them and us. The Israelites viewed God differently than we view Him. They didn’t have the privilege of knowing or hearing about Jesus as the Jewish people in the first century did or that we do. We view God as a caring God, where the Israelites viewed Him in a more punitive way.

In this chapter and especially in this verse, Isaiah has recorded what God says to the Israelites in a loving way. It reminds me of a parent who comforts their child who is afraid of the dark or a thunder storm, by saying to the child ‘I am here’. As children of God, we never have to worry about being alone. God is always with us and we just need to become still and feel that He is there.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” Psalm 27:1

When I was a child, I was afraid of the dark. The unknown of what was out there just seemed to chill me to the core. My childhood was filled with abuse and the inability to control my surroundings drove me to want to know what was going on around me at all times. The dark does not allow for you to know what is going on around you because you cannot your surroundings.

Thinking of my Lord and Savior as my light gave me comfort because with God in my life, I don’t have to fear what is in the dark. The same is true for other areas of my life. I used to be so afraid that events were going to happen to me that I wouldn’t be able to handle. Someone was going to die or leave me and I was not going to be able to keep myself together or worse I would not be able to survive.

Over the years some of those fears have come true and it was in those moments that I learned that even if I fell completely apart, I was going to survive but only because I had chosen earlier in my life accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. At each of those pivotal moments, I was faced with a choice, to lean on God or start down a dark path. Thankfully, I had a foundation of who God is and what He means to me that I was able to choose to place my trust in God. God placed in my life other people who were there physically when each one of those moments occurred. I know that God was the One who placed them there. I also spent time away from other people during those moments, but I was not alone, God was with me.

Now those fears have lessened and some of them have even disappeared but that is only because God has shown me that no matter what happens, He is not leaving me and He is my stronghold.

Who is your light?