Preparing for the End

Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren to go to you ahead of time, and prepare your generous gift beforehand, which you had previously promised, that it may be ready as a matter of generosity and not as a grudging obligation. But this I say: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 2 Corinthians 9:5-6

There are certain cardinal don’ts of the Christmas season. Don’t shout. Don’t cry. Don’t pout. Why? Because Santa Claus is coming to town!

While the Christmas season is behind us, Someone else will soon be coming to town, and His name is Jesus. And just as with Christmas, there are a few important don’ts for us to observe while we await His coming.

First, don’t freak out. Just look at the last few years-the Arab Spring, the Japan earthquake and tsunami, the ups and downs of the world economy-they have been filled with upheaval. With all this going on, people around us are going to feel anxiety about the future, but we shouldn’t. We should have peace because we have Jesus. And when people ask us why we’re so calm, Jesus is the answer.

Don’t be deceived. In the last days, which we are in, there is going to be a great falling away. This means that people who used to call themselves Christians decide to stop believing in Jesus. It means that many Christians are going to be deceived by a lie that steals them from the truth. Don’t let it be you.

Don’t let anyone steal your identity in the Lord. In the end, the anti-Christ will call himself God, exalting himself above everything that’s worshiped, but not for long. Jesus will come and destroy him with the breath of His mouth! Make sure you’re on the right side of that battle. Stay firm in the Lord.

Don’t be stubborn, don’t be stupid. Don’t be one of those people who hear the truth of God’s love for you and refuse to receive it. I mean, you have to be deceived by something to hear about love like God has for you and reject it. His love is so big, so deep, so penetrating, so transforming; I really am afraid for those who reject this love.

And that gets us to the bottom line today-God’s love. Let God’s love give you peace. Let God’s love hold you in His truth. Let God’s love define who you are in Him. Receive His love now, today, and every day for the rest of your life until Jesus comes to town.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Thank You for loving me! I want to receive Your love today and always! I believe Your love for me and invite You to lead me in Your love every day for the rest of my life.

Amen

The Promise of the Presence of the Power of the Holy Spirit

But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. 1 Corinthians 12:18-20

Do you remember back to when you were inside your mother’s womb?

No, obviously not, but if you could, it’s not hard to image God’s voice speaking over you, His hands carefully crafting you, His heart dreaming ahead into your life of all the things you might become. He is, after all, a good Father and the Creator of us all.

In that creation, God put into the very core of us which part of His body we were called to become. This part of us lay dormant like a seed until the Holy Spirit filled us upon conver-

sion and brought life to that God-given identity and calling with which we were born.

Now we face a choice. Will we allow the Holy Spirit to determine our identity, to tell us where we fit in the body of Christ? Or will we insist that we know better than Him, forcing our way into what we want the most or think we’ll like the best?

This should be a silly question. In fact, it should not be a question at all. Obviously, if God is good and trustworthy-and we are believing that He’s good and trustworthy enough to save us from our sins and give us Heaven, after all-then we should trust that whom He created us to be will be the most fulfilling and life-giving identity we could have, beyond all we could accomplish for ourselves.

Nevertheless, oftentimes we come to church and strive to be like the people around us. Or we strive to be like the leadership up front. Some insecurity about who we are tells us that we need to stand in front of the congregation to be important. We need to be on a board. We need to teach a class. We need to be seen.

Nonsense. We need to be the part of the body that God determined we would be.

Submit your life to the Holy Spirit today and allow Him to determine your steps. Let Him set you apart for service in the body and make your time in church about those around you instead of yourself. Then, and only then, will you find the fulfillment you desire.

Prayer Holy Spirit,

Thank You that You know more about me than I do! I give my life to You today and ask that You help me become the part of Christ’s body You created me to be.

Amen

Vision: A View from the Top

Yet surely My words and My statutes, which I commanded My servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? Zechariah 1:6

Do you know what my greatest fear is? It is that I would be successful at the wrong thing. That should be your greatest fear, too, because do you know what that would mean? It would mean succeeding and failing at the same time, to miss out on why God has you here because you weren’t listening to Him, you weren’t yielding your heart to Him, and that you weren’t in a place to really hear His voice or see the vision that He has for you, your marriage, and your future.

You see, it is possible for you to go through life serving God, but never following Him. On the other hand, it is impossible to follow God without serving Him.

People serve God without following Him all the time. They do the religious thing and check the box, saying, See? I served. I went to church. I taught in Sunday school. I passed the bags for the offering. I served!

You can do these things, and that’s great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re following Jesus. Following Jesus means that you need to hear His word and respond, and you can’t do that without picking up your cross and taking that up in your service to Him.

For example, I have three kids. Imagine that they are the best kids they could possibly be. They get perfect grades, always choose good friends, make wise decisions, work hard, and are responsible with everything they do. Yes, they do all these things, but what if they don’t listen when I speak to them? What if my words mean nothing to them?

What if they did all those things I mentioned, but then they decide to buy into some Zen religious thing, and nothing I say to them makes them turn back to God? Do you think I would be pleased with them as my children?

The answer is no. A perfect child who ignores their parents’ voices will break their parents’ hearts. That’s what God is saying to us here.

Listen, you and I will not live long, but God’s words last forever. Let’s pay attention.

Prayer Father God,

Thank You for speaking to me! Please teach my heart to listen carefully to You and help me to understand Your words and everything You say. I do not want to just serve You. I want to follow You!

Amen

Sign Language

Here am I and the children whom the LORD has given me! We are for signs and wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, who dwells in Mount Zion. Isaiah 8:18

Everyone hates to lose an argument. Once you’ve taken a stand on an issue, it’s very embarrassing when you can’t defend it against opposition and they get the better of you.

So for those of us who feel this way about defending our faith in Jesus, our verse today is good news. We have an argument that no one can beat-a transformed life. No one can argue with that!

When God does a miraculous work in your life, setting you free and leading you down the right path through life, rarely are words needed. The people around you will notice the difference, they will see your confidence and peace that fly above the circumstances around you, and they will want in on what you have.

But maybe you’re reading this today, saying, Bob, you’re the sign and the wonder for people, not me. Well, my sign says that you’re the sign, because Ephesians 4 says that my job is to equip the church to do the work of the ministry. It’s my job to equip, your job to minister. Only you can shine your light and share your story; I can’t do that for you.

If you’re nervous about being the sign, chances are pretty good it’s because of sin, so let me give you some more good news: Signs stands for Standing In Grace Neutralizes Sin. When you rest in the work of Jesus on the cross and live in the love He has for you, then it breaks the power of sin in your life and sets you free to become His sign to the world around you.

This requires you to be all in. A light doesn’t shine when it’s trying to hide, but only when the electric power of God flows through it and it stands out there with a constant desire to be a witness for Christ, a lighthouse that pierces the darkness and points people in the right way.

This can be your life today. Will you choose to be the sign and wonder that God created you to be?

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Thank You for showing me signs to keep me on Your path! Please help me to not see as the world sees and hear as the world hears. But instead help me to see, hear, hope, and believe in the sign of Your love-Immanuel, God with me, You with me right now, able to help me handle anything that comes my way.

Amen

Hijacking the American Dream

But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. 2 Peter 1:5-7

What’s the destination of your train? Oh, you didn’t know that you have a train? Well of course you do! We all have one-it’s called Life.

At the end of your life, when your train stops and you walk out the door, where will you find yourself?

You see, this is the most important question we can answer for ourselves. But unfortunately, many of us are more caught up in how nice our train is than in where our train is going. How soft is the bed? What’s the thread count in those sheets? Is the food in the dining car gourmet, or just café? And, for goodness sake, the coffee had better be from our favorite name brand chain.

Jesus told a parable in Luke 12 to show us just how foolish this way of thinking is. He told the story of a man who had a huge harvest-I mean bumper crops-and he didn’t have enough space in his barns to hold it all. So he built bigger, better barns and thought to himself, I’m set for life! Now I can take it easy for the rest of my days, eating and drinking to my heart’s delight.

God interrupts the man’s celebrations with a terrible message. Fool, this night your soul will be required of you. Then Jesus drops the punch line, So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.

In other words, even if your train is made of pure gold, it’s worthless if it drives you straight to Hell. You would be better off in a train made of trashcans that gets you to Heaven. So how do you make sure your train is heading to the right place? It all starts with faith in Jesus’ death on the cross for your sins, but in our verses for today, Peter tells us it should build from there.

Our faith is our ticket to board a Heaven-bound train, but what makes us rich towards God is building on our faith virtue, and on virtue knowledge, and the list goes on. If we will do these things then our faith will bear fruit, storing up riches where they will last forever-in Heaven.

Prayer Father God,

Thank You for making a way for me to arrive in Heaven! I need Your help to build my life right down here on earth. Please show me how to build on my faith so that it bears fruit that will last forever!

Amen

The Full Surrender

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Psalm 119:105

What directs your life? How do you make decisions from day to day?

A lot of people simply make their own plans and head out into life in whatever direction they wish to go. However, for the Christian, this is not an option.

The reason that we should not choose our own way is because God calls that going astray. And the truth is that He has plans for our lives that, if we will submit to Him, will be a million times better than anything we would have come up with on our own.

So how do we follow His plans for our lives? What source of direction do we have so that we can perceive our path? The best source we have is God’s Word.

His Word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. When we try to walk by any other plan then we are walking in darkness and it will lead us to stumble in life. Just like if you try to find your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night when you are out camping in the mountains where there is no light, if you do not bring your flashlight then you are going to stumble.

Here’s the problem-we want the five-year plan. We want the ten-year package. We want the blueprints of our life to float down from Heaven and land on the kitchen table. But God’s Word doesn’t promise that, and do you know why? Because if He gave us those things then we would check out.

We would stop seeking Him, looking to Him for direction, pursuing Him for His presence along our path. We would try to accomplish His plans on our own, and that would never work because His plans for our lives are such that He wants to be a part of them. In fact, they even are so amazing that they are things we could never accomplish on our own without Him.

Listen, if you’re not in God’s Word then you are thinking too highly of yourself. We cannot do life on our own-either stumbling in the dark without a light or trying to live by the light with more faith in ourselves than in God.

Let’s do life right-in the light of God’s Word with faith in the One who can bring us all the way home.

Prayer Lord God,

Thank You for being my light and my salvation! Thank You for Your Word that guides me on my path! Please help me to hear Your direction clearly and give me faith to walk with You all my life.

Amen

Home Safe

But as it is written, Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.’ But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. 1 Corinthians 2:9-10

What is on your mind today? Is it sports, your job, issues in your family, or some other thing that consumes your earthly life?

My hope today is that your mind is set on Heaven, because what Paul tells us in these verses is that Heaven is so far beyond anything we have here that it’s not even worth comparing them. He is telling us that we need to get excited about what’s to come more than we are excited about what is down here.

Think of the most outrageous thing you have ever seen or heard. Paul says that Heaven is way beyond that. It’s better than the best Super Bowl halftime show, more impressive than the latest special effects masterpiece in digital 3-D, grander than fireworks on the Fourth of July. Even Mount Everest, the Great Barrier Reef, and the galaxies of space pale in contrast. Nothing you have seen, whether in creation or made by man can compare to Heaven.

You might think that such an incredible place would be hard to imagine, but wait-look at the rest of what Paul said. God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. Hallelujah! Do you realize what that means? God does not want this to be a mystery to you! He wants you to know what Heaven is like so that you will be excited about it! And not just excited, but out of your mind in anticipation of arriving to your heavenly home and hearing your Father say, Home safe! Well done, good and faithful servant.

We cannot comprehend Heaven on our own, but God reveals these things to us by the Holy Spirit. Do you want to learn what Heaven will be like? Then pray with me:

Prayer Holy Spirit,

Thank You for making Heaven such a wonderful place! Please reveal to me the mystery of Heaven, so that I will be captivated by it instead of by the things of this world.

Amen