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Tell Our Story…But Tell It Right!

For June 1, 2019
God created us in His image and likeness. As such, we are responsible to live a life that reflects His majesty—before Him and the world, just as our Lord Jesus taught:

A tree is identified by its fruit. If a tree is good, its fruit will be good. If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad. A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. And I tell you this, you must give an account on judgment day for every idle word you speak. The words you say will either acquit you or condemn you. Matthew 12:33-37 (NLT)

We have a tremendous responsibility to tell our story—right! No one can tell our story but us. For only we can tell a morally noble and ethically courageous story through fruitful and productive lifestyles that model His character and conduct. Such stories honor the Lord and enhance the overall human condition.

A zest for living while celebrating the “little things;” remaining “in the moment;” visionary in the sense of considering the welfare of the next generation; engaging in production, enterprise, personal and professional accomplishments are ways we tell the story right.

Some would argue that improving our thinking enables us to tell the story right. Unfortunately however, human thoughts—subject to our fallen human condition—are corrupted by sin and in desperate need of purging:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. Ephesians 2:1-3 (NIV)

Jesus Christ allows us to experience total transformation through the Born Again experience:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:4-10 (NIV)

The right story encompasses Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and the newness of life emerging from the love, redemption, and acceptance God provides. Only He has the power to make us new creatures on the inside, which allows us to function at our full potential on the outside.

When we have this intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ that transforms the heart, His Spirit produces improved behavior, which leaves an indelible witness that follows us beyond the grave as Revelation 14:13 (NIV) teaches: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”

This substantive internal change allows us to disclose His virtue through morally and spiritually distinct lives; lives full of spiritual vitality, love and purpose; lives of peace and joy; lives that honor the Lord and better the human condition of other people living around us.

We reflect His purity of mind and heart where altruism compels us to help others by seeking their wellbeing just as 1 Corinthians 10:24 (NLT) declares: “Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others.”

We are always cognizant of setting an example of noble and spiritual purity before the world; encouraging and inspiring others into right living as examples of God’s holiness, majesty, and purity. Ultimately, we become His reflections of justice showing mercy, kindness, forgiveness, and other noble virtues that better our overall human condition.

Let us tell our story…But tell it right!

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We Have A New Lifestyle

For May 26, 2019
As followers of Jesus Christ, we have His Spirit dwelling within, Who enables us to illuminate our surroundings as a candle illuminates the darkness. And as we continue to abide in Christ, we emulate His moral and spiritual fervor just as He promised in Matthew 5:14–16 (NLT):

You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

We will never arrive at 100% perfection in these mortal bodies; because of our human frailty. Thus, we require a Savior and Mediator—all the time. In other words, we will grieve the Holy Spirit by committing a sin, or walking in some form of disobedience, or being rebellious towards God instead of walking in His Spirit.

Typically, this happens on those occasions when we choose to disobey the Lord out of pride, selfishness, or spite, like children having temper tantrums. However, much like the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:17–20, we will eventually “come to ourselves” by repenting of (or turning from) our sin and returning to the Lord.

This is our Sanctification or the process by which the Spirit of Christ (or Holy Spirit), who inhabits at the New Birth, helps us to emulate our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ just as 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 declares.

Our sins remind us how deficient we are at achieving Christ’s perfection consistently as He did. We must rely completely on His Holy Spirit to reflect the Lord’s moral and spiritual proficiency in our thoughts, speech, and conduct.

Each day, His Spirit also reminds us of what Christ did for us at Calvary, and He supplies us with a new lifestyle that honors the Lord while benefiting others and ourselves.

Ultimately, His Spirit molds us into the likeness of Jesus Christ over the course of our lifetime as we operate under His influence and give Him complete control of our lives.

In addition, since we belong to Christ exclusively, we seek opportunities to grow spiritually by reading the Bible, fasting, praying, participating in regular worship, serving others, and performing other noble deeds that honor the Lord.

We perform these “good works” not to earn God’s salvation and favor. Instead, we practice them to honor the Lord Jesus Christ—out of a heart of gratitude—because we are saved already.

In addition, His Spirit also produces a growing sense of humility and unworthiness, along with a passion for the things of God and a disdain for the things of the world.

True fulfillment will never be found by pursuing the things of this world. It will be found as we pursue the things of Christ…with a new lifestyle. What a wonderful Savior!

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Nobly And Purposely Designed In The Image of God

For May 20, 2019
In the beginning, as God was completing His Creation of the Heaven and the earth, He created man and woman and placed them in the Garden of Eden. But before performing His crowning achievement, God said:

Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth (Genesis 1:26).

Yet in the grander scale, we humans are separate and distinct from—special from all other created beings just as God is special and unique; separated from all others. When He breathed in us “the breath of life,” He purposely and deliberately imparted this distinction within us giving us an eternal human spirit (Genesis 2:7).

Genesis 2:15 states the Lord placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to manage and cultivate it. Ours is a solemn stewardship because we have dominion over the land, air, and aquatic creatures and the responsibility to cultivate vegetation, minerals, and water for its proper use and our benefit.

Colossians 1:16-17 tells how the Lord created all things, including us. But, we humans are His greatest creation; greater than Mount Everest, the Grand Canyon, Aurora Borealis, Victoria Falls, Table Mountain, the Barrier Reef, the Amazon rainforest, the magnificent Redwoods, and the sun, moon, and stars combined—in God’s eyes.

It is the Enemy’s job to confuse and distort God’s perfect plan by telling us we are flawed and worthless. He has convinced many of us that we “won’t amount to anything.” As result, many of us believe we will be “nothing but failures” in this life. However, these are lies because God created us differently, much like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; when assembled they create a beautiful portrait of His love, redemption, and glory.

The Psalmist declares God designed us with glory and honor with all things under our feet (Psalm 8:5). Truly, God has given us an amazing pedigree that is up to us to accept. However, we must never let our pride and sense of self-importance deceive us into thinking or feeling we are God ourselves. He is the Creator, and we are the created. Psalm 36:6 tells us God preserves the earth and all that is in it.

Unlike any other created being, we can choose to live a noble life that reflects our Creator’s dignity to affect eternal changes in our lives and others around us. Thus, we should never consider ourselves as mistakes or afterthoughts.

We are special and unique persons who fulfill His perfect, eternal design for the universe. In other words, God created you and I, with all our complexity, to function according to His design: to bring Him honor, not the Enemy.

God’s marvelous creation provides us with the undeniable evidence of His existence and loving care. The Psalmist observes the heavens declare His glory, and the skies above are the visual displays of His awesome craftsmanship (Psalm 19:1). Because of the undeniable witness of His creation, those who brazenly and defiantly scoff at His existence have no excuse on the day when they will account for “every idle word” (Matthew 12:36).

Yet, made in His image also means we can choose where we will spend our eternity; whether in Heaven with the Lord or in Hell separated from Him. Jesus describes Hell as a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth; where the tormenting worms never die and the raging fire is never quenched (see: Matthew 13:42, and Mark 9:48).

I believe the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” will be a self-imposed human torment to some degree. Because unfortunately, Hell is the place where atheism and agnosticism will no longer exist because everyone there will instantly become “believers” in God’s existence and His redeeming love and grace freely extended to everyone through Jesus Christ. But they will spend eternity regretting not taking advantage of it—when they were alive and had the opportunity.

Our minds control our cognitive and anatomical functions. We should use them for proper thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and memories. Isaiah 26:3-4 (NLT) is clear about what happens to those whose thoughts and minds are properly fixed on the Lord:

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.

We also read in Philippians 4:8 (NLT):

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

We are to use our bodies as examples of God’s love and goodness in the world and never as the Enemy’s weapons for death and destruction. We are God’s crowning achievements of creation and salvation. We are to live out—to the best of our ability—the noble plan He has designed for each of us.

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We Have A New Moral Position

For May 18, 2019
In the Beginning, God created our ancestors, Adam and Eve, to be perfect human beings who represented the pinnacle of His perfect creation. God placed them in the Garden of Eden where they experienced complete fulfillment in unbroken, loving fellowship with God.

They lived in eternal bliss as long as they obeyed one command: do not eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Unfortunately, they ate the fruit, and spiritual death and physical death happened just as God warned.

Physical death came over time, but spiritual death (or the Fall of humanity) came instantly, as the entire world became sin-contaminated.1

Sin is like a wedge that separates us from God. It restricts our ability to experience a sustained fellowship with our holy God, since He did not fall from perfection; we did, and our inherited sinful nature, which taints our thoughts, words, and actions, is highly offensive to Him.

Thus, we are sinners not because of the sin we commit. We are sinners because of the sin-tainted nature within us that is constantly at work inside us.

Trying to regain our perfection and reestablish fellowship with God is humanly impossible. Many try to earn a righteous moral position to secure God’s good graces by performing enough “good” works to convince God that we deserve to be with Him in Heaven.

Here, I would spend my entire life trying to perform one more good deed because I could never be sure if the next one would be the one that got me in. I’d be tortured to live life worried if I’ve helped enough little old ladies across a busy intersection, or offered enough people my seat on the bus or subway, or yielded my right of way to enough cars while driving through town, or gave enough money to charity, or assisted enough people in need.

As sinners, we can never do enough “good” to earn passage into Heaven. Even on our best day, God disqualifies us as unclean and our noble acts as filthy rags according to Isaiah 64:6.

We need a perfect Savior; someone who is sinless yet suitable to bear our sin. Again, Isaiah makes an astute observation: He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).

Jesus Christ is our perfect Savior whose death at Calvary (in conjunction with His resurrection three days later) paid sins price completely. Our faith in His redemptive work transforms us on the inside and allows God to declare us as righteous.

In other words, we are no longer judged or condemned by sin, as God exchanges Jesus’ righteousness for our unrighteousness. Now when He looks at us, He views us as He views His Son, Jesus Christ, and He sees us as perfect, having satisfied all of His righteous requirements.

Through Jesus Christ alone, we have God’s forgiveness and His eternal fellowship. He died on our behalf at Calvary, because He loves us more than we could ever comprehend and more than we can love ourselves. It is not our works, but our faith in His works that secures our eternal fellowship with God.

We were once separated from God, but how now we are reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. We were once enemies, but now we are at peace with Him.

In Christ, we have a new spiritual identity and a new moral position. This is God’s grace, and it is truly amazing. What a wonderful Savior!

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We Have A New Spiritual Identity

For May 13, 2019
Through faith in Christ, we can obtain a new spiritual identity from our Heavenly Father that is diametrically opposed to the old physical identity we acquired from our parents at birth. The difference between the two identities is that one is sin-dominated while the other is not.

Only God can eliminate our old sin nature, and He does so through the Born Again experience Jesus says is as mysterious as the wind, yet is essential for true, lasting fellowship with God:

I tell you the truth, unless you are born again you cannot see the Kingdom of God…Don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.  John 3:3-7 (NLT)

Then the Lord continues:

As Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:14–17 (NLT)

Here, the Lord is teaching just as dying people lived because they trusted the efficacy of Moses’ brass snake. We too can live—eternally with God—when we trust the efficacy of Jesus’ redemptive work on Calvary’s Cross.

Through faith in Christ, His Holy Spirit inhabits us. Now we are no longer spiritually dead and sin-tarnished. Instead, we are spiritually alive with a new disposition. Much like light obliterating darkness, God’s penetrating glory obliterates our old sin nature…upon our invitation.

In other words, we must invite the Lord Jesus Christ to take full possession of our hearts and lives. Then as His Spirit comes to live inside us, He immediately changes our nature and worldview.

Now as a result, we no longer pursue a life of sin and self-gratification because we are “new creatures” in Christ, and pleasing Him becomes our new chief concern.

Some associate the New Birth2 with materialism and claim it helps us to gain recognition and amass wealth and power. However, this is not the case since God is no respecter of persons and His Kingdom is spiritual, not material. (Earthly supremacy is what we sinful and proud humans want, while transforming hearts is what our holy and loving God wants. He knows once He possesses our hearts, everything else we have becomes His property—exclusively!)

In this new life we have in Christ, we may not experience significant external changes, like having our names listed in Who’s Who, or having others speak well of us, or even obtaining wealth, power, prestige or property. Nevertheless, we will experience a dynamic, complete spiritual overhaul on the inside that makes us acceptable to God forever.

Inviting the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts, and allowing His Spirit to rule our lives by reverent, sincere faith, and through daily obedience and submission to Him, we are certain to accomplish the will of God, secure His eternal favor, and become His beloved children forever.

Truly, we have a new spiritual identity.

 

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