Category: Uncategorized

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Hebrews 1:3 NIV

Today, I am looking at the first half of this verse and I will look at the second half tomorrow. It is believed that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews to the Jews who had converted to Christianity and were facing persecution. Their suffering was leading them to think about converting back to Judaism. In this one of many verses that Paul is using to encourage the Christians to remain faithful to Jesus, he is talking about Jesus. He is telling them that Jesus, the very One they had chosen to follow, was the radiance of God’s glory. Just like the ray beams of the sun are what we can see, not the actual sun, Jesus is the radiance or rays of God, that we can see, not God Himself.

I do not feel deprived when I think of Jesus that way because even thought He is being described as a radiance, He is also the exact representation of God. It is like a stamp, when pressed into ink and then pressed on paper shows the exact same image that is on the stamp. Jesus is exactly the same as God. Then as if this is not wonderful enough, that we get to see Jesus, the exact representation of God, Paul talks about how Jesus sustains all things.

Our Lord and Savior is not a passive God who sustains by simply being where He should be, our Lord is actively involved with our world. He does this not by carrying things around, He does it by His powerful word. He simply speaks and all of creation listens to Him. Trees grow because He tells them to, winds stop because He says a word, waters move where He tells them to move and demons flee because He instructs them to go.

My question for everyone today is……..Do you know the radiance of God’s glory?

“For, There is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus.” 1 Timothy 2:5 NLT

In the old testament, mankind struggles with the idea of there only being one God, our God. Paul begins this verse in his letter to Timothy by reiterating that truth, there is only One True Living God, our God. With that truth comes the truth that there is only One Mediator as well, our Savior.

We have a Savior who knows what we have gone through and what we are currently going through. Jesus doesn’t sit on the throne unaware of the struggles that we face. He came to earth, was born as a human baby and lived life here. He then, in accordance to the plan, let them crucify Him so He could pay the final and permanent price for all of our sins. He then rose on the 3rd day as prophecy had foretold.

Once Jesus rose from the grave, He spent 40 days with His disciples and then He ascended. He went back to heaven to be with God the Father. Jesus, as fully man and fully God, is the only One who can bridge the gap between mankind, with our sinful nature and God, Who is perfect. There is no other being, human or spiritual, that can plead our case to God the Father but Jesus. After all, He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

If you have trouble talking with God, then I suggest that you start by talking to Jesus. He wants to plead your case to God the Father for you. He wants to save every person, that’s why He came down here, lived here, died here and rose here – to save ALL of us. If you don’t know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, I plead with you to reconsider that decision.

“Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you. Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you.” Psalms 143:8 NLT

How do you start your each morning? What do you think about when you open your eyes? I am not very good at making sure that God is the first thing on my mind. There are times when I give thanks before my feet hit the floor, but unfortunately it is not every time. I am trying to be better about that, thanking God for each beautiful day as it begins.

In this verse, David is asking the Lord to show him the Lord’s love and acknowledging that it is there each new day. The love David is talking about is not only from what he knows of the Lord but from within, from the Spirit. He longs for his spirit to be filled with the presence of the Lord. David trusts the Lord that he will be aware of God’s presence each morning and has trusted the Lord for all of his life. He has faced enemies, his own disobedience and a time of renewal with his repenting heart. He knows the Lord is there for him and that each morning, he will be able to experience God’s love.

Lastly, David is also asking God for direction and guidance. Guidance of what is the right path to walk for his life to be fulfilling of God’s will. David could have asked what is the path that will be the easiest for him to walk, but he didn’t. Instead, he asks for the one that will please God, fulfill God’s will. David trusted the Lord.

I am not sure when David wrote this psalm or prayed this psalm, but it can be applied at any moment of any day. I think of it especially in the morning as it is the beginning of the a new day. A new day when we can feel God’s love for us, feel His guidance of our footsteps for the day and start fresh with renewed energy in our spirit to glorify God with all that we do.

How do you start your day?

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26 NIV

When we ask Christ into our hearts, our lives, we are saved, we become new creations. I have written before about how the outward appearances of that new creation do not manifest over night. It takes an amount of time for us to follow the Holy Spirits promptings and allow our thoughts and reactions to things, the attitudes we have and the habits we have developed, to change. However, the change, if we are willing to let the Holy Spirit do the work He wants to do in us, does happen. It is a lifetime process, though.

One of the changes that occurs is that God removes our old heart of stone and gives us a new heart of flesh. In the Bible, the heart typically refers to a person’s soul, where their essence is located. It was believed that our heart played a large role in leading a person in the decisions they made. It was important then and is important now that we don’t have hearts of stone. God is offering in this verse to give us a new heart, not of stone but of flesh.

He removes the old heart, the old ways of seeing things and understanding the truth in the situations around us. Our old hearts wanted nothing to do with God, we only wanted to fulfill our fleshly desires and do what felt good to us at the time. He removes that heart, the heart of stone that is weighing us down and replaces it.

Our new heart wants to seek God, to seek knowledge about God, to interact with other believers, to worship God, to embrace having a relationship with God. Our new heart helps us to turn from our sinful nature to Christ as we grow in our faith.

My question for everyone is………is your heart made of stone or flesh?

“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6:6 NIV

This verse is part of a teaching from Jesus on doing the right thing but for the wrong reason. In the time that Jesus lived, it was acceptable to do ‘good deeds’ in public, that way you could be seen as a person who did the ‘right’ thing when they were supposed to do it. This mindset of wanting to be seen by others so that you were seen as a good person because you did the right thing was completely turned upside down by Jesus when He gave this instruction.

The idea of doing ‘good deeds’ in private not in public was foreign to His disciples and the other people who followed Jesus around listening to His teachings. Anyone can maintain their behaviors for a short period of time especially when they are in public if they want others to view them in a positive light. When you do this, you have already gotten the reward you were looking for in that those around you are thinking of you in a certain way, which is what you wanted, to be thought of in a positive way. This is a ‘you-centered’ way of living life, always seeking the approval of those around you to give you worth.

Jesus wants us to look in our hearts and examine why we do what we do, why do we give money to charities, why do we hold doors for others, why do we speak kindly to others. It matters what is in our hearts. If we are led to give to others and the setting is a public setting then we should examine our hearts to make sure that when we are giving we are not ‘performing’ for those around us but giving because God has led us to give.

Jesus is saying that the more we can do the ‘good deeds’ without others knowing about it, the better. This way we are not doing things to please others or obtain others’ approval but because God has led us and we are trying to please God. I do not believe that Jesus is saying in this verse that no one should ever pray in public but I believe He is saying to check ourselves as to our motive when we do.

Heavenly Father, please help us to always listen to Your leading. Help us to not make our relationship with You into a public performance for others so we are seen in a good light, but to keep our relationship with You between us and You. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5 NIV

Jesus used metaphors and parables a lot during His ministry because He knew that people would understand the hard spiritual truths that He was telling them if it resembled something familiar to them. Here, Jesus is speaking to the disciples and reminding them that there is a connection between them, a relationship that is important to them as well as to Him. He tells them, as a different way of the thinking of this relationship, about the relationship between the vine or root of a plant and the branches of that plant. He is talking about how the branches are unable to become healthy and strong let alone produce any fruit if they are not connected to the vine.

He has told them directly that He is the vine, the root of the plant. The life giving source for the branches and that they are the branches, which are extensions of Him. They represent Him as His followers. He goes on to tell them that it is not only important for them to remain in Him, to be actively seeking Him, to follow His guidance, but it is as equally important for them to allow Him to remain in them.

As Jesus says at the end of the verse, if the branches believing that they can make it on their own once they have grown and become strong, disconnect from the vine, they will surely die. Their branches will not produce fruit any longer and they will become weak. The same is true with us, we can do nothing without Jesus. We will grow strong as long as we stay connected to Him and choose to actively follow Him. If we are connected to Him but then don’t take in any of the spiritual food we need to grow, then we do not mature as His followers.

So are you receiving the spiritual food needed to grow from the Vine or are you disconnected?

“Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. ” Ephesians 4:23 NLT

Paul is talking to the Ephesians about what it means to be a Christian. When we become a Christian, or follower of Christ, we are made a new creation. That new creation, the new thoughts and attitudes, do not happen over night and the old thoughts and attitudes don’t simply go away.

As we mature in our walk with God, our thoughts and attitudes change. While that is happening, we have a mix of old thoughts and new thoughts, old attitudes and new attitudes. We will never be completely rid of the old thoughts and attitudes because that would mean perfection and that will not happen until we are in heaven.

Instead we are to embrace these changes that God wants to make in us and one way to help us with these changes from old to new is to let the Spirit renew us, daily. For us to be separate from this world and how this world lives, thinks and acts, we need to be living, thinking and acting differently, which can be hard since we still have to live in this world.

So how do we become renewed? One way is to remain in constant communication with God, by prayer and reading His word. Another is to let the Spirit flow through you, filling you daily with God’s peace and love. Another way is to let the Spirit work in your life and not fight the changes that God wants to make in you, especially in how you think about how you are to interact with the world around you. Our thoughts direct our actions and how we interact with others. In other words, be willing to hear God’s plan for your life and then be willing to do what God wills you to do, follow His directives.

These are only 3 suggestions about how to be renewed daily, there are more but thinking about these, beginning to do these is a good place to start. When you let God renew how you think and the attitudes you hold, your actions become renewed as well. Being renewed is such a freeing and wonderful place to be that when I let life get in the way of being renewed daily, I miss it tremendously.

When was the last time you were renewed? I pray it will be today.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8 NIV

As with most scripture, when a verse begins with the word ‘for’, we are directed to look at the verse before it for context. The verse before this says “Let the wicked forsake their days and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” Isaiah 55:7 NIV

This verse talks about how man, who is born with a sinful nature, should be aware of their thoughts and actions. That they should return to the Lord because the Lord is righteous, not like man. The verse for today is giving the reason for man to turn from their wickedness and either turn or return to the Lord, because He is different than us, mightier than us.

I am so thankful that unlike man, the Lord is willing to forgive and pardon because His ways are not the same as our ways. We are unforgiving, we hold grudges, we count wrongs. God is forgiving, He forgets our sins once He has forgiven them and since He forgets them, He doesn’t count them again.

God’s thoughts are not like our thoughts because He is the Creator. He is the One Who put this world, universe and galaxy into being. Clearly our thoughts can not be like His, we are not God. In as much as our thoughts are not like His thoughts, our ‘ways’ are different. His ‘ways’ are not sinful like ours. He created the world to be perfect and we, as humans, messed that up.

‘My thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not My ways.’ We know the Lord’s thoughts are mightier than ours, again we did not have the idea to create an entire world, which means that His ways of doing things are mightier than ours as well. Our ways, how we think something should be done, pale in comparison to how God believes them to be done. The act of forgiving is a beautiful example. God forgives when we come with a genuine repenting heart, where we have been known to withhold forgiveness from another who has genuinely admitted their mistake and asked for forgiveness.

Today, I pray that each one of us would look at our thoughts and the way we do things, compare them to how God wants them thought about and done before we commit to them. If we are taking our thoughts and comparing them to what the Bible, God’s word, says they should be, then we can change our thoughts. If we take how we believe things should be done and compare them to what the Bible says is the way they should be done, then we can change our ways as well.

It all takes time, prayer and willingness to change. Are you willing to commit to the time it takes to change?

“May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” Psalm 19:14 NIV

I have heard pastors recite this verse before they begin preaching at different times in my life. I find this comforting, not just the verse but also the idea that the shepherd of the congregation that I am sitting in is concerned about what he or she is going to say. Most of the pastors I have had in my life as the shepherd of the churches I attended and currently attend, were and are God-fearing, Spirit-filled servants. It is important to them that they show God’s love and spread His message to everyone so everyone is able to make the choice of whether to accept God’s merciful gift or not. I believe this should be important to any person who stands behind a pulpit and proclaims God’s word.

I have had the privilege of being a guest speaker at my church for over 7 years now and each time I am filled with nerves. Originally those nerves were about not saying something wrong because truthfully I didn’t want to look stupid. I have grown a lot over the years and now those nerves are about not saying something wrong because I don’t want to misrepresent God or lead anyone astray from where God wants them to be. I also don’t want to say anything that God doesn’t want to be said.

As important as it is for pastors, anyone really, speaking to a body of people to make sure they have their hearts and minds in the right place, focused on God, I believe it is equally important as we represent God in our daily lives that we also have our hearts and minds focused on Him. We don’t know what someone might need to hear as we interact with them but God does. If we are willing to open our minds and hearts up to be led to interact with others in the manner in which God knows they need, we will be amazed at how the love of God can flow through each one of us.

As we go about our day today, I pray that we each have the attitude in our minds and hearts of wanting what we think and say to be pleasing to God, not only to help others but to also keep us in line with God’s will.

I hope you have a wonderful day today.

“A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.” John 16:32 NIV

In this verse, Jesus is telling His disciples that His time is now. His time to die for the sins of the world. That He was soon to be arrested and the disciples would flee. He would be put to death on the cross. This was something that Jesus had to do alone, in that no one could take His place, but having His disciples would have been a comfort. Only Peter and another disciple followed Him at a distance, the rest fled.

However, Jesus was not alone, His Father was with Him as He always was during the time that Jesus walked this earth. Jesus was always in communication with God the Father. We should also be in constant communication with God, but we are not Jesus and it is hard for us to maintain that prayer like connection all the time. Our life style is one of being busy and completing many tasks at one time. We do not leave a lot of time for rest in our culture.

God can help with developing that ability to remain as constant as possible in communication with Him. We simply need to ask for help, admitting that this is an area that we are not strong in and Jesus will help us.

Heavenly Father, thank You for always being with us. Help us to remain in constant communication with You. You are our lifeline and we should remain connected to You. In Jesus’s precious name, Amen.