Choose Your Glue

And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. 1 Corinthians 2:4-5

What's the purpose of your life?

No, really, do you know? Honestly, this is one of the biggest questions that almost all of us face at some point in our lives. We have to figure out some purpose for our lives or it is impossible for us to keep going and actually feel fulfilled and happy.

Fortunately for us, Paul, in God's Word, can help us identify our purpose in life. He says, for himself, that his faith is not in any wisdom of men, but in the power of God. And this is not something that we should let be just about Paul. We should absolutely take this 100 percent for ourselves.

This is our purpose. It's the point of our life. It's why we're here, why we exist. Whatever our profession is, whatever we do for a living, whatever other things we have a love and desire for, those things are never to replace the heart and glue of it all that we are God's and God's alone, bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

It starts by allowing this reality to be birthed in our heart. You cannot come and tell me that you have just always believed. It's not true, because faith at some point has to be birthed in you. There was never some ever-existing faith inside of you. And maybe today is the day this faith is really birthed inside of you.

Once this faith is birthed in our heart, it needs to be built. We take that faith and build it strong for the glory of the Lord, strengthening one another, strengthening our kids, in the nurture and love and admonition of the Lord.

Then this birthed and built faith needs to be rightly aligned. Our faith is not random. We are not just lining up behind the latest and greatest thing to be preached. No, we align with one thing-Jesus Christ crucified, and only Jesus Christ crucified.

This is the only formula for glue to keep our lives together. Faith birthed, built up, and rightly aligned with Jesus Christ alone. Only this has the power to save us and lead us to everlasting life.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

I put my faith in You today! I turn away from everything in which I have put faith in the past and I choose You alone today. Please glue my broken life back together and lead me in Your way of life!

Amen

Can You Believe This?

For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear, for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire. 1 Corinthians 3:11-13

Now I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!

We all remember that line, right? As the story goes, the first little pig built his house out of straw, and it fell. The second one built his house out of sticks, and it fell, too. The third one, however, built his house out of bricks, and when the wolf came to huff and puff, he could not blow that house down.

This is an almost comical story, but it is eerily similar to something that all of us will one day face: The Judgment Seat.

It is important to be clear that there are two judgments we know about from scripture. One is for unbelievers and one is for believers. The unbelievers will one day stand before the Great White Throne, and no one wants that experience. Today, however, we are talking about the judgment for believers-the Bema (BAY-mah) Seat of God.

The Bema judgment is where God will hand out rewards for all believers according to what they built upon their foundation. The foundation, of course, is Jesus Christ. We must have faith in Him or we'll end up at the Great White Throne judgment. We can build upon our foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, and really, these six things can be divided into two categories-Incorruptible and Corruptible.

The question is, is what you have built upon the foundation of Jesus in your life going to last, or is it temporal? What are you doing with your salvation, with what Jesus did for you on the cross? Only building with the things that will last will be rewarded on the Day, for God will test it all with fire. Wood, hay, and straw will be consumed. Those who built with corruptible materials will be left with nothing, escaping the fire with only their salvation.

Our salvation comes by grace, but our rewards come through works that are rooted in our faith. Our faith is our foundation, but no building is complete with just a foundation. We must build upon it with works that produce eternal fruit, bringing us lasting reward in Heaven.

So how about your life? When your life is tested by fire on that Day, will you have a building left over, or will you only have a foundation? What you choose today determines how you will spend eternity.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Thank You for being a good and righteous Judge! And thank You for taking the judgment for my sins! Please teach me to build on Your foundation in my life with things that will last.

Amen

The Most God-Like Thing We Can Do

Now whom you forgive anything, I also forgive. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ. 2 Corinthians 2:10

You need oil. Think through your day and notice all the different machines you use. If it has a motor, then it doesn't work if it runs out of oil.

In our Christian life, we can think of forgiveness like oil-if we don't have it then our lives simply don't work. Our lives go nowhere without forgiveness. And I don't just mean that Jesus has forgiven us, though that's where it starts. I mean us forgiving others.

Paul writes about forgiveness firsthand in Second Corinthians, as somewhere between First and Second Corinthians, someone attacked him from within that church. Everything about him-his delivery style, personality, message, ministry, and identity-all of it was being publicly discredited and attacked.

Paul was hurt, wounded, ashamed, and embarrassed. His credibility had been destroyed by this guy, so he sends his disciple Titus to handle the situation. Titus returned to Paul and reported that this attacker had repented, and now Paul writes and says to forgive him.

You can imagine yourself in that situation. An insecure coworker is pinning his bad work on you while taking credit for the good things you do, and your boss is buying it. Soon your reputation as a plague to the company spreads and you are alone in trying to clear your name. Or maybe the leader of the neighborhood gossip club plants seeds of doubt in your spouse's mind regarding your faithfulness.

Maybe these examples are more extreme than anything you've experienced, but the fact remains that life is messy and all of us both hurt others and get hurt by others. In that world of hurt, there is only one answer-forgiveness.

Paul forgave his attacker because he realized the weight of all he had been forgiven by God. Maybe what has happened to you goes far beyond what you feel you have done in your life, but the point here is that God has shown His nature as a forgiving God.

If we are going to say that we belong to God then we have no other choice. We have to forgive, and in forgiving, we'll find freedom from the hurt.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

I have been hurt really deeply, and I'm ready to be free of this pain. I choose to forgive those who have hurt me, and I release the justice to You. Please heal me and set me free!

Amen

The Key of Forgiveness

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice... forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:31-32

Countless Christians live under a glass ceiling. Are you one of them?

Perhaps you feel like you just cannot get any closer to God. You feel trapped in cycles of sin where anger, bitterness, lost tempers, and hurt feelings ruin your relationships, or perhaps they just simply keep your relationships from becoming all you know they could be. If this describes you, then chances are you are in a prison of unforgiveness. Nothing else can set you free except forgiving the people who have hurt you, and you can't go forward in life until you are free.

However, there are a lot of misconceptions about forgiveness out there. Here are five things that forgiveness does:

First, forgiveness believes that people are bigger than their blunders. I have been hurt like you have been, but forgiveness means believing people are bigger than their blunders because that's how God has believed in me, bigger than the mess that I've made.

Second, forgiveness allows a second chance. I know it sounds crazy, but this is the forgiveness God has given us, and we are called to the same thing. If we don't go this far with forgiveness then God's grace in our lives is just a theoretical principle waiting to be lived out.

Third, forgiveness demonstrates the power of the cross in your relationships. We cannot be a people who just celebrate the cross once a year or wear it as some jewelry around our neck. No, it has to show up daily in our relationships with each other as we demonstrate the power of Calvary by forgiving each other.

Fourth, forgiveness surrenders the right to get even. It takes the, I'm going to get you back for this, and gives that over to the Lord. It surrenders the right to punish.

Fifth, forgiveness replaces wanting revenge with wanting God's best. Instead of wanting to harm the person who hurt you, it makes the choice to want God's best in their lives.

All this is not to say that forgiveness is easy. It isn't easy. But, if we want to be free and experience the full benefit of God's forgiveness and grace in our lives, then we need to forgive. Until then, we are simply forging with our own hands links in a chain that bind us to the pain and shame of our past, throwing anger and bitterness into our future.

Is that what you want? Don't you want something different? Then choose with me to forgive today.

Prayer Father God,

I want the best of all You desire for me and I know that means I need to forgive those who have hurt me. I forgive them right now, releasing them to You. Pour out Your best for them and please set me free!

Amen

Forever

He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? Luke 16:10-11

Faithfulness. This simple word, often relegated to use only in marriage vows, is one of the most powerful character traits you can possess. Can you guess why?

Jesus reveals the mystery of faithfulness to us in our verses for today. Here's the bottom line-faithfulness, or a lack of it, exposes what is in your heart.

God is asking, Can I trust you with things that really matter? Will you use my gifts in a way that is consistent with my heart and my character? Will you steward them in such a way that it makes them grow, or will you waste them?

He knows that we will be accountable to Him for anything He gives us, so He does not give us more than we can handle. How does He know what our limit is? He knows, because He tests us.

God gives us small things to see if we will be faithful with them. If we are faithful in the little, then He knows He can entrust us with much. And according to Jesus in these verses, the little things with which we prove ourselves are the unrighteous mammon-the things of this world in which it is so easy to get entangled.

So here is the million dollar question-how do you become faithful with the things of the world? The answer is very simple. Faithfulness with the wealth of the world means that we use it to build God's kingdom instead of our own.

In your financial planning, are you trying to save up for a bigger house, a nice boat, or that new luxury vehicle? Or are you trying to find places to invest it where it will create a spiritual harvest, a legacy that will translate into heavenly rewards?

When it comes right down to it, we are either living for this world or we are living for eternity. How we use our finances proves which world our hearts live in. Can you prove to me that you are living for heaven?

Prayer Father God,

Thank You that You want to trust me with true riches! Please help me to be faithful with the little I have, with those things of the world, so that I can prove myself trustworthy.

Amen

Trumpet Time

But in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets. Revelation 10:7

Have you ever been confused by things the Bible says? Or have you ever left a church service with more questions than answers?

Honestly, I hope that you have. I think that it's good to care enough about what God is saying in His Word and through His servants in the church that we allow those questions to come forth. Do you know why?

It's because, when we have questions, we'll look for answers. We'll dig even further into scripture. We'll pray. We'll talk to other believers to see if maybe they've learned the answer to our questions. And then when they tell us the answer, we'll go back to the Bible and test their answer to see if it checks out with the Authority on truth.

So I love questions. I love them because you can never have answers unless you have questions. A person with a lot of questions will become wise and intelligent over time. But here's the thing about questions-we'll always have more.

That's right. No matter how deep we go into the mysteries of God, there will always be more. No matter how much we know the Bible, we'll never know it all.

This could be frustrating for many of us, but here's some good news-a day is coming in which the mysteries of God will be finished. And this day is not far off.

We're in the last days before Jesus' return, which will mark the beginning of the Great Tribulation. During that Great Tribulation, God will send seven angels to blow trumpets. The last of these angels, when he blows his trumpet, he's going to hold it out for a long blast.

This long note will usher in the final things of the Tribulation-the bowl judgments, the five visions that John saw, and eventually Jesus' return to conquer and rule the earth. It will also mark the end of something very important-the mystery of God.

What does that mean? It means that, no matter how ignorant we are now, we have the promise of knowing Him fully, even as He fully knows us. It means that all of these questions that we have now, all the times that you have said, I can't wait to ask God this when I get to Heaven, all of these will be answered. The mystery will be revealed!

So if you have questions about God, seek Him for answers. And for all those questions that just never get answered, just wait; a day is coming when God will answer all your questions.

Prayer Father God,

I confess that I have a lot of questions, and some of them are even painful. Thank You for the hope of Your promise that one day the mystery will be finished and You will give me the answers I need.

Amen

God's Calling

Now the LORD came and stood and called as at other times, Samuel! Samuel!' And Samuel answered, Speak, for Your servant hears.' 1 Samuel 3:8-10

Talking about God's calling on our lives is a very scary thing. Do you know why? It is because God's calling comes down to three potentially disastrous words: God told me.

A lot of damage has been done by people who claimed those words, yet we cannot escape them if we want to fulfill God's call on our lives. He have to hear His voice and know it was Him to have confidence and direction for our lives.

So how do you know for sure that the voice you hear really is God? You follow the signal beacons. There are three of them, and only when all three line up as one can we be sure we are on the right track.

Beacon number one is the Word of God. Nothing you feel God has spoken to your heart can replace what He has already said in His Word. He will not speak to you anything that contradicts the Bible. We cannot take the Word of God too seriously, because what God says is that His Word became flesh in Jesus Christ. We need to follow the Bible with the same passion we have as we follow Jesus.

Beacon number two is the peace of God. Colossians 3:15 says, And let the peace of God rule in your hearts. This is the peace that passes understanding. You cannot explain why it's there; it just is. This peace will rule in your heart when you are following God's voice, but it will flee from you otherwise. Take notice-this peace is to rule in your hearts, which means you submit to it, you direct your life according to it. Do not violate this peace!

Beacon number three is your circumstances. God wants to call you, but He expects you to be able to figure out whether what you hear applies to you or not. This is called discernment. Do you think you have heard God speak to you? Great. Now look at your life and see if what you heard applies to your circumstances. If it applies now, then you have direction. If it does not apply, then maybe you need to go back to God and ask Him again what He wants to say to you.

Listen for God to speak to you, but make sure what you think you hear lines up with the Word of God, the peace of God, and your circumstances. When all three of these line up together, then you can have confidence to step out in what you have heard.

Prayer Lord God,

Thank You for speaking to me! I want to follow You into the calling on my life. Please give me wisdom and discernment to know what You are saying to me and how to follow You.

Amen