Resiliency

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Most of us agree that the time we’re in right now is unlike anything we’ve ever dealt with before. The loss of jobs and the loss of interaction with our friends has probably made us anxious and overwhelmed. Sudden changes to our everyday routines can result in trauma. Now, most of think of trauma as something really, really bad happening to us. We may limit it to an injury or an accident. We might think of trauma as something that only happens during war, but trauma is really any experience that is deeply distressing or disturbing. Trauma is a very individual thing. What may be deeply distressing and disturbing to me may not be deeply distressing and disturbing to you and vice versa. The truth is that trauma exists in all kinds of scenarios, and how we respond to that trauma determines what kind of long term effects it will have on our life.

One of the best factors in determining how trauma will effect us is resiliency. Resilience is the ability to recover from traumatic events. Resilient people possess the following characteristics:

  • They set and move toward realistic goals.
  • They have an ability to look long term.
  • They accept change as a normal part of life.
  • They engage in active decision making.
  • They engage in self-discovery.
  • They communicate well and problem solve.
  • They are actively learning new things.
  • They have an overall optimistic outlook.
  • They have a realistic perspective of themselves and the world around them.
  • They accept and manage the presence of strong feelings.
  • They are flexible.
  • They have a positive view of themselves.
  • They actively engage in self care.
  • They build meaningful connections with others.

Being resilient doesn’t mean you are stoic or unperturbed. It doesn’t mean that the things that come your way don’t bother you. It doesn’t mean you never experience trauma. Resiliency means that you acknowledge that life is hard, but you focus on the resources at your disposal that will allow you to bounce back rather than on the negative traumatic experience itself. The Bible has a lot to say about our attitude and our mind. When we listen to the words of the Bible, we are better able to build resiliency to our situation.

One of the things that helps us build resiliency is a belief in and commitment to something that is higher and bigger than we are. For us, as believers, this means our belief in God. We know that God loves us. We know that God is sovereign. We know that God has control of the situation. God does not experience trauma. He is trustworthy. So we know that we can rely on Him to get us through traumatic times. Romans 8:28 tells us that God works all things together for our good. While we are in the midst of a difficult time in our lives, it helps to put our focus on the good that God will ultimately bring out of it.

Another thing that helps us build resiliency is a knowledge that we are a part of a larger community. One of the reasons that God has given us a church body is so that we can help and support each other during difficult times. Galatians 6:2 tells us to carry one another’s burdens so that we can fulfill the law of Christ. Not only do we have a body of fellow believers that can help rally around us during difficulties and give us a sense of community, but we also have God Himself. We know that we are never going to go through something alone. God is always with us. In Joshua 1:9, God tells us that He is with us wherever we go, so we do not have to be afraid.

During traumatic times, we often become fearful that we will be without. With many out of work right now due to the COVID-19 shut downs, there is a lot of fear about how we will pay the bills and how we will get enough food to eat. Those are very real fears and very real struggles, but God has given us an answer in His Word. He has promised to provide for us. Philippians 4:19 says that God will supply all our needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus. God knows what we need even before we ask Him. He knows our worries and our fears. That’s why He tells us in Proverbs 3:5-6 to lean on Him instead of on our own understanding. By placing our trust in Him and seeking Him first, we allow God to bless us with everything we stand in need of.

Not only has God promised to bring good out of a bad situation or given us a community to be a part of or promised to meet all our needs, but He has also promised that we will have victory. Jesus told us that even though we will have trouble in the world, He has overcome it (John 16: 33). We can share Jesus’ peace and His victory! 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 says, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;  persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” No matter how badly it seems to be, we know that we have victory through Christ. We may be knocked down, but we are not without hope. We have God’s promise of victory to see us through.

Finally, we build our resiliency by focusing on a bigger picture. When we change our attitude from what we are going through right now to what we can be grateful for, even in the midst of hardship, we are on the way to having a resilient attitude. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us to give thanks in all circumstances. No matter how bad it appears to be, there is always something we can be grateful for. Cultivating a grateful heart helps us put things into perspective. It also builds our faith. When we consider all the ways that God has blessed us in the past, it builds our faith to believe that He will bless us in the future.

It’s normal when you’re experiencing trauma to want to kind of fold in on yourself, to withdraw from people and to isolate. There’s a time and a place for that, but don’t stay there. People who stay isolated during stress instead of using the resources around them are less resilient than those who might isolate for a short time but ultimately begin to focus outside themselves. Romans 12:21 tells us that the secret of overcoming evil is to do good. When we take the time, even in our pain, to do good to others, we lessen that pain and build resiliency so that, in time, we can bounce back, stronger than before. Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5). We know that God is with us. He will see us through any difficult time we are facing. He will not allow us to be destroyed, even if we are discouraged for a time.

No one is going to be perfect at being resilient. It’s something we all have to work towards. We can build resiliency in our life in the in-between times. The time to learn good coping skills, get a good friend group, and educate ourselves on the resources available to us is before trauma happens. Yes, we can do it in the midst of our struggles, but if we have healthy, life-giving strategies in place before something bad happens, we will be more successful at navigating the difficult times. Begin building your resiliency today. Study God’s promises. Lean into Him for direction, provision, and understanding. Find a good church home and build a group of trustworthy friends who are compassionate, competent, and full of good character so that when you need someone to lean on, they are there for you. We need to be brave enough to ask for help when we need it and brave enough to acknowledge that we are struggling and need help when we are. We don’t have to pretend to be fine all the time, but as believers we should be examples of resiliency to the world around us.

Godly Mentoring

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Revelation 3:19-22 (AMPC)

“Those whom I [dearly and tenderly] love, I tell their faults and convict and convince and reprove and chasten [I discipline and instruct them]. So be enthusiastic and in earnest and burning with zeal and repent [changing your mind and attitude]. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears and listens to and heeds My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will eat with him, and he [will eat] with Me. He who overcomes (is victorious), I will grant him to sit beside Me on My throne, as I Myself overcame (was victorious) and sat down beside My Father on His throne. He who is able to hear, let him listen to and heed what the [Holy] Spirit says to the assemblies (churches).“

God loves us like a Father. He wants to mentor us the way a father would mentor his children. Oftentimes, that mentoring means correction and discipline. It’s said that a good friend will tell you that you have a lovely smile, but a best friend will tell you that you have a lovely smile and that you have spinach in your teeth. Jesus doesn’t point out our faults to condemn us. No! He points them out so that we can grow and be better. He mentors us.

Jesus wants to have a relationship with us. He wants to come in and sit down and share a meal and some instruction. He wants to lead us to victory, and He can because He himself has already walked that path. That’s what a mentor does. He turns around and helps someone else to walk the path that he has walked and reach the success that he has reached. We can respond to this mentoring in one of two ways. We can allow Satan to convince us that Jesus does not really love us or want what’s best for us. We can allow those lies to dampen our fervor and keep us locked up in prison. Or….we can see this correction as Jesus mentoring us in love–as Jesus being our best friend, who can tell us anything and everything to make us better people. We can open the door, let Him in, and fellowship with Him. We can allow that correction to bring us farther along the path to victory.

Which response will you choose?

Father, I thank you that you love me enough to correct my faults. This might be painful in the moment, but I know that you do it to bring me to a higher place of victory and freedom in you. I want to be your friend. I want you to be my friend, too. Help me to open the door when you knock, to invite you in, to spend time with you, and to listen to what you have to say. I want to walk the path that you have walked and to reach the place of victory where you are. Help me to have the right attitude during times of correction. In Jesus’ Name, Amen

Seize the Day

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2 Corinthians 6:1-2 (TPT)

“Now, since we are God’s coworkers, we beg you not to take God’s marvelous grace for granted, allowing it to have no effect on your lives. For he says, ‘I listened to you at the time of my favor. And the day when you needed salvation, I came to your aid.’ So can’t you see? Now is the time to respond to his favor! Now is the day of salvation!”

Grace is a wonderful thing. It takes away the punishment we deserve and instead offers us the riches that Jesus deserved. Some people refer to grace as an acronym that stands for: God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. Grace is like God’s exchange department. We exchange our sin for righteousness. We exchange our filthy rags of works for garments of praise based in faith. We exchange all the eternal consequences of our sin for the riches of God’s glory in Christ Jesus. And none of this is based on our merit. It is all based on God’s goodness and mercy alone!

For some people, grace is a hard thing to accept. They allow condemnation to rule their lives. They try to earn their salvation. The weight of their sin lies heavily upon their souls, even after they have repented and God has forgiven and forgotten it. Other people go to the opposite extreme. They think that if God is willing to forgive any and all sin, then they can live however they want and just ask forgiveness now and then to avoid the fires of hell. This isn’t true repentance, and it is an abuse of the grace God has offered us.

That’s what Paul is talking about here. Don’t let the idea of grace, God’s unmerited favor, keep you in a state of perpetual sin, living however you want. If you do that, you may never truly repent and receive salvation. Instead, seize the day. Recognize grace as an incredible gift. Treat it as something of value–which it is! Receive that grace as a covering for your sin and as a means of salvation, and then live as if grace has purchased you. Let grace invade every area of your life, so that others see that you have been changed by it. When you do this, you become like the apostles: coworkers with God. You partner with Him! And that’s an amazing blessing as well!

Father, I thank you for your gift of grace. You have given me your unmerited favor out of your great love for me. Your son took the penalty for all my sins that I might share in His inheritance. I can’t even begin to comprehend the depth of your love for me. Father, grace is the most precious gift you could extend to me. I don’t want to take it for granted. I want to fully embrace your grace and value it the way that I should. Help me to live in such a way that others can see the gift of grace you offer to them and can accept it as well. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Refining Fire

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1 Peter 1:7

“These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.“

None of us enjoy going through difficult times. Trials are not an immediate source of joy. They are hard. They are trying. They bring us to the point of breaking. But Peter tells us that trials serve a higher purpose. Trials refine our faith. They prove its genuineness. The Bible often compares faith to gold. Gold often occurs in combination with other substances. It can be found naturally in rock and other deposits. It can occur mixed with copper or silver. As a result, gold needs to be refined to its purest form in order for it to have value.

Because gold is relatively stable compared to other elements, it can be refined by fire alone. Repeated heating of the gold removes any impurities. In this way, gold could be purified to remove the other elements often found with it to make it more and more pure. Fire was a way of testing the quality of gold in the ancient world.

In the same way, the “fires” of trials that we go through, tests the purity of our faith. If our faith is not firmly rooted and established in Christ Jesus, we will give up in the midst of outside pressure and trials. We won’t follow His example in our suffering and persevere. But if our faith is pure and firmly rooted, we will keep pressing forward. The more our faith is tested, the more we learn to press into God, strengthening our faith and refining it–proving that it is pure faith in God alone and not in our own accomplishments or abilities.

This kind of faith is valuable and rare. It is eternal, unlike the gold it is compared to. Ultimately, it brings glory and praise and honor to Jesus Christ because faith that is pure and true and tested reveals Jesus’ character to the world around us. That’s the kind of faith we are to strive for….the kind of faith that shows Jesus’ to an unbelieving world.

Father, I thank you for the trials I am going through. Even though they are not easy or comfortable or enjoyable, I know they serve a purpose. By enduring these trials well and pressing into you, I become a better reflection of Jesus to the world around me. You are using these struggles to make my faith pure and powerful and valuable. So I pray that you will keep me strong. Help me to lean on you, because your strength is made perfect by my weakness. Help me to remember to thank you when things get rough because you are using it to bring me to higher levels in you. Help me to press on and to reveal Jesus to those who are watching how I handle these tough times. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Building a Legacy of Faith

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Our theme for March has been all about faith. We’ve talked about confessions unto faith, confessions of faith, sharing our faith with others, and exercising our faith. Now I’d like to talk about the logical next step: creating a legacy of faith. When you hear the word “legacy” what do you think of? If you’re like me, you might picture an inheritance that you leave for your children. You might think about a celebrity who made a lasting impact on the world. Wherever your mind goes, one things for certain. A legacy is something that lasts far beyond your own lifetime. If you’re lucky, the legacy you leave will be a good one–one of value that adds something to the world.

There’s a lot of talk in the more charismatic churches about things like generational curses and the lasting damage that sin can do in a family. While that’s true, the reverse is also true. You can leave a legacy of generational blessings. There is a lasting benefit to a family that has a legacy of faith passed down from generation to generation. Billy Graham said, “The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is a legacy of character and faith.” Timothy knew that legacy. He received a legacy of faith thanks to the testimonies of his mother and his grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5). As believers, we should seek to create a legacy of faith in our families that carries on from generation to generation.

In Deuteronomy 6:6-9 Moses establishes God’s plan for creating a legacy of faith: “These commandments I give to you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” As Christian parents, it’s our job to pass along our faith and knowledge of Jesus Christ to our children, but what if we don’t have children of our own? Can we still create a legacy of faith? Absolutely! Paul considered the believers of Corinth to be his children. In 1 Corinthians 4:15 he says, “Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.” Anyone that we mentor in the Lord and pass along our faith to is a link in the legacy of faith that we create. We should start with the members of our immediate family and our households, but we don’t have to end there!

WHAT IS YOUR LEGACY?

Your legacy should include the testimony you have of Jesus Christ. What happened in your life? How did Jesus impact your life? What did He do for you? Testimonies are powerful. They remind us of all the times God got us through, all the blessings He showered down on us, all the revelations we have received. If you come from a long line of believers, you may have testimonies of your ancestors. Did you have a praying grandmother? Did your family share stories of the amazing things God did in their lives and through their lives? If not, that’s okay. You can start from scratch right where you are right now, but start. Start talking about what God has done in your life.

Your legacy should include how you celebrated victories, how you worship, and how you prayed. Nothing is too insignificant. When you are walking out your faith, your family will see these things firsthand. Do your children see you pray? Do they see you worship? Do you do these things regularly? Are they a part of your life outside of church on Sunday? The thing about legacies is that they flow naturally from a life lived out. When you are walking your life out in front of your family, they will know what is important to you. They will know your values. If you want to leave a lasting legacy of faith, then God has to be number one in your life. No one who knows you should wonder what place God held in your life. They should know because they saw you live it out.

In order to create a lasting legacy of faith, we have to be obedient to God. We can’t be hypocrites and expect our children to behave differently. We need to follow wherever God takes us. That might mean leaving behind the legacy we inherited from our parents. For example, if you were raised in a family of missionaries, it would be easy to assume that God is calling you to be a missionary too. But what if he’s calling you to something else? When God called Abraham, he called him to leave his family and his history behind him in order to start something new. Whatever God calls you to do, even if it’s never been done before in your family or it’s something you never would have expected, be obedient to that. A legacy of faith is bigger than family tradition. It’s about following God no matter what!

In addition to being obedient to God in every area of our lives, we have to be intentional. We can’t expect our children to just pick up faith casually. Look again at the instructions in Deuteronomy 6. God doesn’t say “Oh, just believe in me, and your children will follow.” No. He gives us instructions on how to be intentional. We are to impress the commandments of God on our children. We have to live them out. We need to talk about them. They should be an every day topic–when we lie down and when we get up. They should be an anywhere topic–when we sit at home and when we walk along the road.

When we focus on intentionally passing our faith onto our children, we take advantage of teachable moments. There are many times when discussing our own walk with the Lord is a natural thing to share. Our children need to know the good as well as the bad. When did we succeed by following the Lord? When did we mess up? What happened when we repented after messing up? How has God spoken grace into our own lives? These are the stories that mean the most, and we never get too old for them. Even now, when I need wisdom and guidance I call my grandmother in the faith.

There’s just something about godly grandmothers. They know the Lord in a way few others do. They have a strong godly testimony, and they often make the best prayer warriors. These women of God have passed their faith along to me. Some of these women were actually my grandmothers. Some were just grandmotherly figures in my life. Either way, their faith was lived out in front of me. It influenced me, and I hope some day my own faith will influence my own children and others as I try to follow that same path of discipleship that these women are walking.

Faith is a personal thing. While you can pass along your testimony and your faith to your children and grandchildren, that isn’t going to be enough for them to get into heaven. It isn’t enough that your grandparents have a strong faith or that your parents have a strong faith. You have to have a faith that is personal and wholely yours. In passing along your faith, make sure you stress to your children that they need to know God for themselves. He will do for them what He has done for you. He is trustworthy and faithful. The greatest gift my parents gave me was the knowledge that I could not coast into heaven on their coattails. I needed to know God for myself. I needed to God to be my God.

If I want to pass on a legacy of faith, I need to base my life on the Word of God. I need to be 100% sold out to God. I need to be all in. I can’t hold back a single part of my life. God needs a completely devoted life to do great things. I want my children to see what it looks like to be completely devoted to God. If I don’t live it first, I can’t expect them to live it either. That brings me to my final point.

We need to keep walking. Our legacy begins the second we accept Jesus Christ as our savior. Our testimony is constantly being written. As we follow after Jesus and after the saints who have gone before us, we are walking a path that will lead through the rest of our life. If I fall, that’s okay. I just need to pick myself up, repent, and keep walking. It’s a process, and sometimes our failures and how we handle them speak more highly and persuasively of God than our successes.

So how is your legacy? If you haven’t given it much thought, start today. Share your story. Walk out your faith publicly. Let everyone around you see what God is doing in your life and through your life for others. Be intentional about passing along your faith to your family. Then move beyond your family to others in your community. Shine your light so that others can see and praise your Father in heaven.

Work of Faith

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1 Thessalonians 1:3 (TPT)

“For we remember before our God and Father how you put your faith into practice, how your love motivates you to serve others, and how unrelenting is your hope-filled patience in our Lord Jesus Christ.“

We can get caught up in performance. Oftentimes, instead of relying on God, we try to do things in our own strength. When we do that, we operating in works of the flesh. It’s easy to tell the difference because works of the flesh always result in feelings of exhaustion and frustration. But that’s not to say that we should do nothing. James tells us that faith without works is dead. What does he mean by that? What’s the difference between works of faith and works of the flesh?

It comes down to motivation. Are we doing these works to earn favor with God? Are we doing these works to manipulate our circumstances? Are we doing these things to get what we want? That’s a completely different picture than the one we see here with the church at Thessalonica. The believers in Thessalonica had heard a life-changing message. They had accepted the gospel whole-heartedly. It had changed them from the inside out, and as a result they began to serve others. They weren’t doing these acts to earn God’s acceptance. They knew they already had that. Instead, their love for God and their love for each other motivated them to put their faith into practice. They did good because their hearts were full of love for Jesus. They wanted to follow in His footsteps. He went around doing good, and so did they.

When we put our faith into practice we are doing works of faith. When our love for God motivates us we live our faith out loud. Those acts speak loudly to the world about our relationship with Jesus Christ, and the change He can make in a heart that’s devoted to Him.

Father, I thank you for the sacrifice of your Son Jesus Christ. I want my life to be an example of a true disciple. I want to be more and more like you. I want to live out my faith, but I don’t want to get trapped into doing works of the flesh. Help me to check my motives and to make sure that I am operating out of genuine love and devotion to you and not to try to earn anything or manipulate anything. Forgive me for the times when I have done things out of vain conceit. I want to be a light for you not a monument to myself. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Create in Me a Clean Heart

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When was the last time you did a self-assessment on your conscience? When was the last time you joined David and prayed: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139: 23-24)? We have a lot of time on our hands on the moment. At least, those of us who aren’t considered “essential workers” have a lot of time on our hands. Some of us are using it to tackle all those projects at home that we’ve been putting off. Some of us are using it to get reacquainted with our family members. Some of us are using it to deep clean our houses. And some of us are using it as a wake up call from God to slow down, take a breath, and assess where we stand.

We don’t often think about our lives on a deep, introspective level. We don’t often sit down and think about our lives and the choices we’ve made and how we feel about them. We don’t often sit down and ask ourselves about our spiritual fervency. We are living in the last days. That’s a statement we’ve heard all of our lives. After all, the disciples themselves believed they were living in the last days, but I think we can look around at our world and agree that we are getting ever closer to the return of Christ. What condition will He find us in when He arrives? Will we be the wise virgins who kept their lamps trimmed and full of oil? or Will we be the foolish virgins who weren’t diligent and neglected to have enough oil on hand?

1 Timothy 4:1-2 says: “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.” We often think about people with seared consciences as being non-believers, but this verse suggests that there will be believers who fall away after false teachings as well. When we commit a sin, it’s the job of our conscience under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to convict us of that sin, but what happens if we ignore that pricking of conviction? What happens if we continue to justify what we do? Our conscience gets seared. The more we ignore the input of our conscience, the less often our conscience will speak up against us. At some point, we can corrupt our consciences to the point that they no longer no the difference between right or wrong and we feel no conviction or guilt at all. This isn’t the state we want to be in when Jesus returns.

Don’t think it can happen to you? It can. It happened to David, and he was called “the man after God’s own heart.” We know the story of David’s sin with Bathsheba. He sees her bathing and lusts after her. His lust leads him to bring her to the palace. He sleeps with her and gets her pregnant. Then to hide his sin, he calls her husband back from the war to sleep with her in an attempt to make it look like the child is his. But Bathsheba’s husband screws up the plan. He doesn’t sleep with her. Now, David decides to kill him. After all, if Uriah is dead, he can’t tell anyone that he didn’t sleep with his wife when he came home. He can’t tell anyone that the baby is not his. One sin has led to another and another and another. David knows what he has done is wrong. Obviously, he does because he tries to cover it up, but he doesn’t repent. He doesn’t feel guilty enough to confess his sin….not to his followers….not to his friends….not to God. He has seared his own conscience.

It’s possibly a full year later when Nathan comes to confront David about what he has done. When Nathan shows up, David is finally ready to admit what he did wrong and to repent. He cries out in Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” David understands something about his nature, God’s nature, and repentance that we sometimes miss. I think this understanding is one of the reasons God refers to David as a man after His own heart. David recognizes that his very nature, his very core, is sinful. He recognizes that on his own, he will never do anything righteous. His heart is damaged by sin. He needs a new heart. He needs a clean heart. He wants to feel a pure conscience to feel joy in the Lord again.

David understood these two truths:

1)God cares about our hearts more than anything else. 1 Samuel 16:7 says: “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Why does God look at our hearts? Because our heart is our inner self. It’s the most basic, fundamental part of who we are. Proverbs 4:23 tells us to “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Everything we do flows out of what is in our heart. It flows out of our inner self. Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 12:34 “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” God wants our hearts. He wants all of us. We can do all kinds of good deeds, we can give all kinds of sacrifices, but if we do not have our heart in the right place, it’s all meaningless. David recognized this too: “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise” (Psalm 51: 16-17).

2) Our hearts are fundamentally broken and sinful. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, our very natures have been altered. We are born with sinful natures. We may desire to do what God asks us to do, but we lack the capability. We can not be good enough. We can not be holy. Genesis 6:5 says “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” Not long after the fall, here is the entirety of mankind plotting such evil in their hearts that God decides to wipe them out and to save only Noah and his family. Jeremiah agrees: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (17:9) What’s the solution? God is. There is nothing we can do for ourselves. The state of our hearts require God to intervene.

That’s what David is asking for when he says: “Create in me a clean heart.” The word “create” here is the same word used in Genesis. David knows that it will take a divine act of making something exist that did not exist before. It’s not enough for God to adjust David’s heart. It’s not enough for God to clean him up a bit. No, David realizes that at the core what he needs is a completely new identity. He needs a newly created heart. One that’s like the one that Adam and Eve were given in the Garden before they sinned. And God wants to do this. He tells Israel in Ezekiel 36 that this is His ultimate desire: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 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. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.” God does this through the work of Jesus Christ. When we are in Christ, we are new creations. Our old heart is gone. We have a newly created heart.

Just like God creates in us a new heart, He can re-quicken our consciences as long as we repent. True repentance is more than just confessing our sin. It’s more than just listing for God all the things we’ve done wrong. God knows what we’ve done. It does not good to rehearse the list for Him if we don’t do anything more than that. We have to change our thinking so that we see our sin the way that God sees our sin. Repentance means that we change our thinking and align our thoughts, values, and actions until they align with God’s. We get back on the path that leads to relationship with God. We turn ourselves around!

“The good news of the gospel doesn’t stop with pardon. We treat grace like it’s God’s big eraser for our every wrong or mistake. But God does not only mean to rub the page clean. No, He intends to write a new story in sin’s place, replacing what was once broken, wicked and dead with love, faithfulness, and life. The gospel doesn’t just get us out of hell, it also makes us new.”

Marshall Segal

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to these things. As the time for Jesus’ return approaches, I want to be sure that I’m all in. I want to hear “Well, done. Good and faithful servant.” I don’t want to disappoint the Lord because I was too busy with the noise of the world rather than listening for His voice and following after Him. I want to humble myself like David and cry out, “Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.” I want to sing like the modern worship leader: “Clean my hands. Purify my heart.”

What Are you Pursuing?

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1 Timothy 6:11

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.

I think sometimes as Christians we think about the Christian life as being passive. We sit and wait for God to bless us. We don’t think about waiting for God as an active idea. We don’t give much thought to the verse: “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” There’s a lot of passivity alive in the church today, but here Paul warns Timothy using very active words like flee and pursue. We can’t just sit around waiting for righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness to rain down from the sky and cover us. We can’t assume that the fruits of the Spirit will just spring up fully grown in our lives if we aren’t doing anything to cultivate them.

We have to actively pursue these things. We have to obey what God has given each of us to do. When we do our part, God steps in and does the rest. No, we can’t get these things just based on our works. They are gifts from God, but they come from seeking after Him actively. They come from pressing in. They come from spending time in God’s presence and actively developing a close relationship with Him. You don’t sit around assuming you’ll have a good marriage if you never do anything kind or loving for your spouse. You don’t expect your marriage to be good if you never take the time to talk to one another or you never spend time together. No! We realize that relationships like marriage take time and investment.

Our relationship with God is no different. When we invest our time and activities into things that actively seek after God and please Him, we reap the harvest of the blessings that He has for us. So stop sitting around day dreaming of things like righteousness, gentleness, increased faith, and love, and instead actively pursue them. Seek them out. Cultivate the seeds God is planting in your life. That’s the only way to reap a harvest.

Father, I thank you that you have blessings upon blessings in store for us, and you have given us clear direction on what to flee and what to pursue. Father, I want to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. I know these things originate with you, so Father, I am going to press in and seek after you. I want to be close to you at all times. I want my life to be a reflection of you to the world around me. I know as I seek after you, I will find you. You are all we need. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Hiding From God

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Peek-a-boo and Hide n’ Go Seek are some of the first games we learn as children. They help us with concepts like object permanence and trust. They make our babies smile and laugh. When we play these games, there’s very little fear involved. Oh sure, my toddler might get a bit anxious if I don’t find him fast enough. He’ll jump out and yell “ta-da!” just because he doesn’t want to be away from me for that long. He’s afraid I might not ever find him and that he’ll be left alone, but most of the time he is happy to hide, knowing that I will be looking for him until he’s found. He’s happy to have me hide and to try and find me. Of course, I don’t hide anywhere where he can’t find me, even though I have the skills and knowledge to do so. I know it’s important for him to be able to find me when he looks for me. God does the same thing. He doesn’t hide from us so that we can not find Him. He knows it’s important for us that we be able to find Him when we look for Him.

In the Garden of Eden, I think God played games like Hide n’ Go Seek and Peek-a-boo with Adam and Eve. I think it helped to build that naturally occurring trust between Adam and Eve and God. After all, in the Garden there was no fear. There was only innocence. Adam and Eve had a close, intimate relationship with God that was filled with love and trust. They were naked both literally and figuratively. Obviously, they lacked clothing, but beyond that I mean they were vulnerable and open and unashamed. Nakedness represents a purity and an openness. Nothing is hidden or concealed. When you are free to be naked, you feel safe and accepted. If Adam and Eve ever hid from God in the Garden of Eden before sin entered the world, they did so like a child does when playing a game. It was all in fun. There was no fear there. They knew God would come looking for them, and they wanted Him to come looking for them and find them. I imagine the garden was full of fun and games and laughter.

Adam and Eve had no reason to fear God because they were just as holy as He was. There was nothing within them that was different from God. Then Satan tempts Eve, and she sins and she leads Adam to sin. Now there is something within them that is broken. They are different from God now. They are no longer holy. Because they understood the difference between good and evil, Adam and Eve recognized their brokenness. Fear now entered their lives. They knew they could not stand in the presence of a holy God the way they were, so they hid themselves from God. We know God knew where they were. They couldn’t really hide from God’s presence, but this is the same process my toddler has when he’s done something wrong. He is afraid of the consequences of his wrong doing, and he thinks if he runs away and hides from me, then he won’t have to face those consequences.

It doesn’t work for him any more than it worked for Adam and Eve. They now felt their vulnerability. They now felt shame. They now felt fear. They had to hide themselves and cover themselves because their soul was screaming out for protection. A protection from holiness and from justice. God didn’t change, but their understanding of God did. They’re relationship with God did.

Satan is always trying to get us to see God as only holiness and justice. He wants us to see God as some angry, cosmic judge sitting with his gavel just waiting to declare us guilty and unworthy and to slap us with some kind of punishment for our wrongdoing. Satan sees God in this way because he lacks a comprehension of mercy and love. Satan saw in God only the things he desired for himself: power, prestige, worthiness of worship. When he rebelled and tried to set himself in God’s place, those are the qualities he wanted. He wanted unconditional servitude because he does not understand love. Satan creates slaves; he has no concept of creating sons.

But God doesn’t create slaves. Adam and Eve weren’t mindless automatons created for the sole purpose of feeding God’s ego. God creates families. He creates sons and daughters. That’s His desire for us, and God does this because He isn’t just a holy God or a just God, He is also a loving God and a merciful God. God is love. The supreme and ultimate definition of what love is. He isn’t sitting up their with a gavel waiting to punish us. God has never been about punishment. He didn’t punish Adam and Eve. We talk a lot about the “curse” of sin. Sometimes we even say that God cursed Adam and Eve, but God didn’t curse them. Sin did. God told them the consequences of their choice. Because He is holy and they are sinful, they can no longer be in His presence. Because they chose themselves as source and handed dominion over to Satan, creation won’t work the way it was designed to work. Now Satan is in charge. Now sickness can come and pain and suffering. Things that God didn’t program into the creation, but that Satan brought with him all the same.

Even kicking them out of the garden isn’t God’s punishment on them. He clearly says that He is doing it so that they don’t eat the fruit of the tree of life and so remain in their sinful state forever. He prevents them from being stuck in sin. He offers a way out. God always has a back up plan, and it’s always for your good. He looked for Adam and Eve. He sought them out. He promised His Son. Jesus Christ took our punishment. He died on our behalf.

God still seeks us out even today because He doesn’t change. He still offers love and mercy and redemption. He does not want us stuck in our sinful state. Satan doesn’t change either. He still wants us to believe his narrative of who God is. He wants us to fear God. He wants us to hide. He wants us focused on our sin. He wants us focused on our brokenness. He definitely doesn’t want us running to God in repentance. Oh no! He wants us to stop going to church, to stop reading our Bible, to stop praying….He wants us naked and vulnerable and afraid! He wants us full of shame and condemnation. Because he knows if we really saw who God is, we would not be afraid. We would not run and hide. We would run straight to God, cry out in repentance, receive His mercy and forgiveness, and be saved!

The next time sin rears its ugly head in your life, stop for a second and question your feelings of shame and condemnation. Shame and condemnation are NEVER from God. They aren’t in His vocabulary. When the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin, He says, “What you’ve done is wrong. I love you. I want relationship with you. Won’t you come to me and let me clean you up so we can be together?” When Satan condemns you of sin, he says, “Who you are is wrong. You’re a horrible person. No one would want relationship with you. God doesn’t want to see you. Your friends and family don’t want to see you. You deserve to be alone.”

Don’t let Satan convince you to run and hide from God’s loving redemption and offer of restoration. Run to God instead. Repent. Be made whole again. And enjoy restored relationship with Him. Even if you don’t run to Him right away, God knows where you are. He will always come looking for you. Just like He asked Adam, He will ask you, “Where are you? Why are you hiding?” Because God loves you. He always has, and He always will.

Believe that You Receive

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Mark 11:24

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Today I placed an order with Amazon for a toy box for my sons. I went to Amazon’s website. I found the toy box I wanted. I clicked all the right buttons to request that this toy box be sent to me. I paid for it, and I received a confirmation and tracking number to keep track of my shipment. In the next few days, I will have that toy box in my possession. When we order something online, we don’t doubt that it will be sent. We have checked that the product is available. We have put in a request. We have done what was necessary to secure the product, and now we wait, knowing it is on its way.

That’s the picture Jesus gives of prayer. He says “whatever you ask for in prayer…” The Greek word used here for “ask” means an act of the will. It places an emphasis on the item your asking for like your requesting a gift, rather than on the person you are asking. It’s as if Jesus was saying, “when you go to God knowing that something is His will and you petition Him for that thing….” We know that God is not a genie in a bottle. He doesn’t give us our every whim, but when we approach Him with a request for something we know He has in store for us, we approach Him with confidence.

Then Jesus says, “believe that you have received it.” The Greek word used here for “believe” means “to credit to; to have full confidence in”. We have approached God with a request we know that He has in store for us. It is His will to give us our request. The item is “in stock,” so to speak. Now, we have placed our order and “asked” God. We are “crediting” it as being ordered. There is no doubt here about what is going on. We have full confidence. It’s as if we placed an order with Amazon. The item is ours. There is no doubt about it. We have a shipping number and a guarantee. We can have that same confidence when we approach God in prayer. When we ask God for something He has already promised to give, we don’t have to doubt whether or not He will give it. It’s a done deal!

The Greek word used for “receive” is a word that denotes taking something. We reach out our hands and we grasp hold of what we’ve asked God for. When the postman arrives with my Amazon package, I won’t be sitting passively by. I’ll reach out my hands and take hold of the package. It’s mine. It belongs to me. When God has given us a promise, and we request that promise in prayer, we can then take hold of it and “receive it.” It belongs to us. It’s ours.

What are you asking God for today? Have you searched His Word to know that what you are asking is “in stock” (in keeping with His promises to you)? Have you made your request (asked God to give it to you)? Are you laying hold of the package because you know it is yours already?

Father, I thank you that you have given me an entire book of promises. Your Word contains many promises that I have the right to claim as your child. It’s a part of the wonderful inheritance you have given me through Jesus. I thank you that when I have need of something, I can come to you in full confidence, knowing that you will give me the things you have already promised me. I don’t have to doubt or wonder. I don’t have to earn them. You give them freely. So, Father, I am reaching out my hands and taking hold of the promises you have in store for me. I know I can do so with confidence because your Word tells me so. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.