Lost in Passion

Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. 1 Corinthians 6:18

What's the problem? It's my body. I can do with it whatever I want to!

Our culture is trying to justify their extramarital sexual relationships as somehow okay. You know, God's Word on the matter should be enough for us. He said it. We do it. But there are reasons behind His instructions that are for our good, and I'll give you three of them.

First, unguarded passion leads to pain. Paul had just finished telling the Corinthians that fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals, and sodomites will not inherit the kingdom of God. This is pain to the most extreme degree-eternal pain-but it's not the only pain that comes with unguarded passion. The pain now is the hole we're trying to fill with all those relationships, but no one can fill that hole except Jesus. Trying to fill the hole with relationships only deepens it as we break our heart over and over again.

Second, unguarded passion has a powerful progression. Do you remember the first time you held hands? It was pretty exhilarating that first time, but not for long after that. Soon you put your arm around the girl. Then there's the first kiss, and of course that only revs your engine for more. If you never put up guards, you will quickly find yourself going all the way. And when you've gone all the way, you're as confused as ever, because it wasn't the fulfillment you were looking for.

Third, unguarded passion leads to perversion. The Corinthians tried to justify their sexual hunger by comparing it to their hunger for food. When I want food, I eat. When I want sex, I go get it.

Paul responded, saying that God will one day do away with both food and your stomach, but your body and what you attach to it remains forever because you are the temple of God. Are you really going to go join yourself to a harlot? Are you really going to join yourself to someone who's willing to give themselves to you without first committing to a lifelong marriage?

There is ruin on the road of unguarded passion. Don't waste one of the greatest gifts God has given you. Guard yourself, choose Jesus, be whole, and be blessed.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Your Word is very clear on the values I should hold regarding my sex life. I repent for the ways I have violated Your plan for my sexual relationships. Please help me stay on the right path and experience the blessings You have for when I follow You!

Amen

Going All the Way

And this I say for your own profit, not that I may put a leash on you, but for what is proper, and that you may serve the Lord without distraction. 1 Corinthians 7:35

The world is out to get you. If you give it the chance, it will hang a noose around your neck and drag you away from the life God wants to give you.

There are four nooses in particular where marriage is concerned about which I want to warn you.

Noose number one is the lie that singleness is a second-rate life. If you are single, do not settle for anything less than God's best for your life. This means to reserve sex for marriage, date only Christians, and refuse to lower God's standards because we want to be married so badly. God has good plans for you, single person, but you will only receive them if you trust Him enough to wait for Him to work.

Noose number two is the lie that time heals. Trying to let time heal things is really just avoidance. It's a scab over an infected wound that will only get worse if we don't deal with the problem, and the longer we wait, the worse it will be. If the problem is too big to handle between the two of you then get help, and then work to create a safe environment in which both of you feel safe to communicate when something hurts.

Noose number three is the lie that ...words will never hurt me. Proverbs 18:21 says, Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Words can either hurt or heal. Your words can kill your marriage, or they can resurrect it; it all depends on what you choose to say.

Noose number four is the lie that your marriage is none of my business. Hello? Look, in Joshua 7, where the Israelites could not stand before their enemies because one man had taken things devoted to God as his own, saying it was just his business. Marriage is devoted to God, a covenant made in His presence, and what you do with it affects the rest of us.

Don't let the world wrap these lies around your neck and destroy your relationships. Instead, pursue God and let Him lead you into the blessed marriages and lives He desires for us.

Prayer Father God,

Thank You that You have a good plan for my life! I want the best that You have for my marriage, so I ask for You to come work in my life now and help me to be the best husband/wife/ single person I can be.

Amen

The Losses of Lawsuits

Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? ...I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you, not even one, who will be able to judge between his brethren? 1 Corinthians 6:1,5

Caution: Your witness is at risk. If you are not careful, then every time you try to talk about God you will actually turn people away from Him because of the way you live.

We need to set up guardrails on our lives to keep from entering those danger areas where we lose our witness, where our lives for Christ are tarnished because we are really living life for ourselves.

One area we need to especially guard is in the area of lawsuits. This is truly countercultural, because our nation is so suit-happy that justice is often turned upside-down as people chase after perceived slights and wrongs, really just embarrassing themselves and our whole nation.

Lawsuits are especially terrible when one believer sues another believer. The Church is a family and it dishonors the family when two siblings can't get along, bringing their spat publicly before an unbelieving judge to decide between them.

It makes me think of Jerry Springer, where families regularly air their dirty laundry and little spats and fickle arguments before a national audience. Never do these families resolve anything by doing this. Instead, these families are embarrassing themselves! They are bringing shame upon shame to their family name!

This is what it is like if we bring lawsuits against one another! What witness do we have left if we do this to one another? None!

Instead, we must choose to be thankful and to pursue peace with one another. If we will maintain thankfulness, then we will not cross over into the bitter selfishness that leads to lawsuits.

Let us be thankful and at peace with one another at all costs. And if for some reason we must argue our case, then let us turn to the wise believers among us to determine justice. This is a family matter. Let it stay within the family and not ruin the witness of the Church of God.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Please forgive us for ruining Your name by suing one another and bickering with our brothers and sisters before the eyes of the world! Restore real justice and righteousness to Your Church, and start with me as I choose to prefer being wronged, lest I lose my witness for You.

Amen

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

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free-and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:12-13

Think with me about the relationships you have with other people in the body of Christ. How strong are those relationships? What is the focus of those relationships and where do they fall on your priority list?

How many people within your church are there with whom you have a conflict? If they walked in the room, you would feel uncomfortable. Can you think of them?

Hear me now-no matter what our experience is with relationships in the body of Christ-no matter the conflicts, no matter how uncool some of us might be, no matter what-we are one body and we need to start acting like it.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth to address an issue of unity there. Much like now, this was not an isolated problem found in only one church. In fact, Paul addressed similar issues in nearly all of his letters.

The problem was that there were Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free people, and the mindsets behind these divisions were deeply rooted in the people. All these groups and classes of people came together to church. Free people looked down on slaves. Slaves didn't know how to live with freedom in Christ. And Jews and Gentiles had to come together from completely different worlds.

Paul gave them one message to help clear up all the confusion: You are one body. It does not matter who you have been or how the world classifies you, when you believe in Jesus then you become part of His one body, unified and united with all other believers throughout the whole world.

We hear the same message today and it requires us to lay down all of our own agendas, our own preferences, our own way of thinking, so that we can serve and bless one another, helping one another become the part of the body that God created them to be. It requires us to honor one another for who God made them to be, allowing them to contribute what God has given them in a God-honoring way.

Like it or not, we are one body, and we need to start acting like it.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Thank You for dying for me! I know that I am a unique part of Your body, but I choose to lay down my own rights so that I can serve my fellow believers. Please help me to unify Your body!

Amen

Women Drivers

And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man. 1 Corinthians 15:49

Do you know what one of the most important traits parents need today is? Courage.

I want to speak some new, fresh courage into your life as parents, so let me share the story of one really courageous mom-the mother of Moses. Let me set the scene for you,

because things were really bad.

First of all, the Pharaoh of Egypt was afraid of Israel, so he made life miserable for them by enslaving them under cruel, rigorous labor. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, he ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill all the boys they delivered, but let the girls live.

Well, here's the beginning of the courage, because the midwives feared God more than Pharaoh and refused to obey him. God blessed them for that faithfulness, giving them their own homes and families. We need to start here, too, to have the courage to say to the rulers of the culture that surrounds us, We're not going there. We're not getting pulled down. God will bless us for that; you can claim it as a promise.

So then comes, Jochebed, Moses' mom, who sees Moses and says, I'm going to be courageous like those midwives. As all the other mothers around her lost their children or gave them away to death, she said, No way; I'm holding on. And because of her faith, just as God blessed the midwives, God also blessed Jochebed by saving Moses and giving him to her until he was weaned.

Now, we need to personalize this story, because this is a real mom and her real baby. It's not some flannelgraph story stuck up on the board of some Sunday school classroom. It's real, as real as you and me. And if we'll make it real in our hearts, then the courage we see in the story can become ours, too.

I'm telling you what, this mom here refuses to give in. She says, Enough. My child is not going down with this Egyptian way of life and culture. My kid is going to grow up to know the Lord. My kid is going to be taught the ways of the Lord.

Listen, we need some courageous moms and dads like this in our culture who stand up and say, My kids belong to Jesus; there is no way I'm losing them to the world. I will establish guardrails that keep my kids on the right path. They will love Jesus all their days, period.

I'm telling you, it can happen. You do not have to lose your children to the world. Don't let it happen. Decide now to be courageous.

Prayer Lord God,

Thank You that I can trust You as I step out in courage and faith against all the culture around me! With You as my great big help, I determine today that my children will love You all their lives!

Amen

Good Grief

And He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.' 2 Corinthians 12:9

I remember when our oldest child, Mitch, was born, he was born blue. He came out with the cord wrapped around him. And as soon as Mitch came out, they grabbed him and about sixteen specialists raced into the room, people that I didn't even know were there. They were pumping his little chest and trying to get him to start breathing. And finally one of the docs leans over and looks at me and says, Hey, are you the dad? I said yes. And he said, Well, you ought to come over here and speak to him, because you're the only voice he'll recognize.

So I walked over there and I'm telling him, Breathe, baby. And I realized that God is like that. In the midst of your grief, grief so intense that you don't even know if you can breathe again, His voice is right there, speaking over you, My grace is sufficient for you!

Well, praise God, Mitch came home. We were so thrilled to have him. But five months later he's sick again. Like way sick. His whole little lungs and chest would just sort of cave in with every breath. We raced him back to Children's and into this oxygen tank he went for three days and three nights. I was scared to death.

In fact, the family that we shared the room with lost their child to the very same thing that our child had. It rocked us to our core, and I cried out as many of you haven't-Lord remove this. Take this. Give it to me. Don't give it to him.

Our grief in that moment was more than we thought we could handle. But I can tell you that it was that moment of the unbroken presence of the Lord that our faith as a family was catapulted, and our church was birthed out of pain and grief and out of really feeling a loss of control, leading us to completely trust in Jesus.

I remember years later, Mitch was fine and healthy and doing good, but then Bon got sick. My wife gets sick. First they thought it was MS, then something else, and they're scaring us to death, but then the final news came: It was ovarian cancer at off the charts levels.

Making a very long story short, God has completely healed my wife, but here's our testimony of God's grace in our grief: Our family has been forever bonded together during these times God has allowed, proving that His grace is sufficient and teaching us things that we never would have learned otherwise.

All of you have had grief and pain. Let God's grace come in today and create something good out of the grief.

Prayer Lord God,

I cry out to You that my grief really hurts! I honestly don't know how much more I can bear, but I put my trust in You and ask that You use this to create something beautiful and wonderful for Your glory.

Amen

Recommitment

The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because...He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.' Luke 4:18

Here is a list of the devil's greatest weapons against marriage: Broken hearts, imprisoned lives, and eyes that fail to see reality.

None of us plan to get divorced when we are standing at the altar to be wed. This tells me that, under normal circumstances, we would choose to stay married for the rest of our lives. Why is it, then, that so many people get divorced? The answer is that these weapons sneak into our hearts and pervert our will until we make choices we would never normally make. For example, broken hearts never completely mend with time. Instead, they become like infected wounds that, though they are not bleeding anymore, still painfully hurt every time they are touched. So when our spouse does something that remotely hits that sore spot, we react out of pain-not from what our spouse did, but from what someone else once did that broke our heart. This reaction often causes more pain and begins to divide our marriage, and soon we wonder how we are ever going to feel the love again when all we feel is hurt.

Or consider a life imprisoned by pornography, drugs, or alcohol. You can try with all your might to remain faithful to your spouse, but your addiction leads you to do things you hate. You know the destruction your habits are causing, but you don't know how to get free. These issues lead to our last one-eyes that fail to see reality. Broken hearts and captive lives communicate certain devastating lies-He doesn't love me. Our marriage is hopeless. These are not the truth, but they are things that people say out of pain and desperation. He does love you, but he's captive and needs help. She does love you, but her heart is broken and she needs you to be her hero right now and not deepen the wounds by abandoning her.

We try to reason away these lies by saying, If I had known she was that kind of person, I never would have married her. Well, guess what-Jesus knew you were that kind of person and that's why He came-to heal the brokenhearted, give sight to the blind, and set the cap-

tives free, and in so doing prepare for Himself a pure and spotless bride.

We have all been part of the problem, but He came to be the solution. Whatever difficulty you are facing in your marriage right now, there is hope. Turn to Jesus today and ask Him to do in your marriage what He has promised.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

You are God and You can do all things! I need a miracle in my marriage. Please heal our broken hearts, set us free, and help us to see true reality. Please make our marriage all You desire it to be!

Amen