True Living

And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in grave clothes, his face wrapped in a head cloth. Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him go!” John 11:44 (NLT)

Jesus had just called to Lazarus. “Come out!” And the man who had been dead for four days responded to the voice that can penetrate even the darkness of death. Lazarus was awakened from his deep sleep, from his final darkness, to live again.

I wonder what it must have been like to die and to be called back to life. I wonder what Lazarus experienced as his eyes opened and he got up. What he must have thought to see himself wrapped in grave clothes? How do you get your mind around that? How did life change for him after he came back to life?

I can ask us the same question. Each and every one of us was/is dead. Dead to God. Dead in our hearts until Jesus called us. The difference is instead of being physically dead, we were/are spiritually dead and we are content to live like that. Grave clothes made not of material but of our choices. A coldness in our bones not from physical death but from the sins of this world seeping in and slowly eating away at our souls.

And Jesus called us. He said “Come out!” He breathed life back into the hearts that were stone. He touched us and filled us with warmth and love and joy. Jesus is still raising people from death back to life. He is still in the business of restoration. Jesus still, each and every day, is calling your name, my name, and saying “Come out!” Come out of where you are, come away from where you have been and start a new life. Start a new life with me.

He is calling us to experience what it is like to be fully alive. How will your life change after you respond to Jesus call to truly live?

Maintaining a Temple

Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NLT)

To fully take care of ourselves we need to address the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of who we are. We talk a lot about the spiritual component. Today, I’d like to talk about the physical.

We are told our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. He lives in us. And we are also told we are to take care of our bodies. I believe the stronger we are physically, the better we can serve God. When he calls us to something, we can do it!

So how do you take care of a temple? Obviously, as with any building, you have to be cognizant of the bones. If a building isn’t structurally sound, it can’t function as intended and eventually becomes a hazard. The materials you put into it are what keeps it functioning well.

The same with your body. How we maintain our bodies determines our overall well-being. And this takes a little discipline.

What do you put into your body as fuel? Is most of what you eat processed food? Is your food full of sugar? What is the nutritional value in what you eat? Is your body getting from your food what it needs to thrive?

What about exercise? Do you spend time each day moving your body so it gets the exercise it needs to be strong? Are your muscles and joints limber so they can function as intended? Do you have enough muscle tone to carry out the day’s activities? Most of these things don’t happen sitting at a desk or on the couch!

How much sleep do you get? When you sleep your body heals. Do you burn the candle at both ends? Do you wake up tired?

I think if we each took a moment and considered how to maintain our temple, if we asked God how we can improve our health habits, we’d be able to identify one thing that we could work on. Once we made that a habit, we could identify another.

Our purpose here on earth is to be God’s hands and feet. In order to do that, we need to be as healthy as we can be. What are you going to start (or stop) doing that will help you be the best you?

Beautiful As A Biology Book

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”” ‭‭1 Samuel ‭16:7‬ (‭NLT)‬‬

Recently, I had a surgery to have a part of my body removed that was causing problems because it was not functioning properly. After the surgery, the surgeon came out and told my husband that it was a good thing we removed the part because it was in bad shape. Then he said “The rest of her insides are textbook perfect.”

I laugh at that because it seems funny to me to have my insides compared to a biology book. But it made me think. Here I was walking around with a diseased body part. It was causing me some problems but only the people closest to me knew my struggles. From the outside, I looked just fine. From the outside, no one could see that I had this chaos going on. And really, I didn’t even know how bad it was.

God told Samuel that we would do this. We look on the outward appearance of someone and decide how their life is going. We look at how they look, what they do and the responses that we see and make assumptions.

In reality, few of us advertise the things we struggle with. We want to put our best foot forward and look great! Sometimes, we know we are doing this. Sometimes, we don’t.

The Bible says we are all broken on the inside. We all sin. We all fool ourselves. That is until we compare ourselves to Jesus. When we spend some time looking at him, we realize how much we fall short. We know we need help. We know that our hearts are not as great as we pretend they are.

Now if you are OK looking great on the outside and being broken on the inside, stop reading. If you want to grow the heart that God is looking for, stop pretending. Spend some time with Jesus. Talk to him, read his Words and linger. The Holy Spirit will begin an unseen work on your heart. After a while, you will become Jesus perfect. And that is the only perfect that matters.

A Minute In It - Enduring Love

A minute in God’s Word will change your life. Take a moment to read the text below and then fill in the blanks with your personal story praising God for his enduring love in your life.

1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good!
His faithful love endures forever.
2 Give thanks to the God of gods.
His faithful love endures forever.
3 Give thanks to the Lord of lords.
His faithful love endures forever.

4 Give thanks to him who alone does mighty miracles.
His faithful love endures forever.
5 Give thanks to him who made the heavens so skillfully.
His faithful love endures forever.
6 Give thanks to him who placed the earth among the waters.
His faithful love endures forever.
7 Give thanks to him who made the heavenly lights—
His faithful love endures forever.
8 the sun to rule the day,
His faithful love endures forever.
9 and the moon and stars to rule the night.
His faithful love endures forever.

10 Give thanks to him who killed the firstborn of Egypt.
His faithful love endures forever.
11 He brought Israel out of Egypt.
His faithful love endures forever.
12 He acted with a strong hand and powerful arm.
His faithful love endures forever.
13 Give thanks to him who parted the Red Sea.
His faithful love endures forever.
14 He led Israel safely through,
His faithful love endures forever.
15 but he hurled Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea.
His faithful love endures forever.
16 Give thanks to him who led his people through the wilderness.
His faithful love endures forever. Psalm 136:1-16 (NLT)

Give thanks to him who ___________________.
His faithful love endures forever.
He brought _______________________.
His faithful love endures forever.
He acted ____________________________
His faithful love endures forever.
 Give thanks to him who made _____________________.
His faithful love endures forever.
He led ____________________,
His faithful love endures forever.

Both And

Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:27 (NLT)

Can you imagine it? Walking along the road, discussing the day’s events and Jesus walks up and starts a conversation with you? Can you imagine how that would feel? As they discussed the latest news and how heavy their hearts were, Jesus engages. Later they said that their hearts were on fire as he talked to them.

What I find really interesting is that he doesn’t just say “Here I am! It’s me, there is nothing to fear.” Instead he takes them through Scripture. He goes back and shows them all the foundational things said by God through humans. He grounds them in truth.

Later in this chapter, he does the same thing with the disciples. He shows up and blows them away with his presence. They are dumb-founded and amazed. But instead of saying “Well, now you’ve seen me you are good to go”, he points them to Scripture. Again taking them through the things that pointed to him. He cemented their experience with the Scripture.

Just like then, we often get to encounter Jesus in our lives and our walks. We have experiences where we understand that he is revealing himself to us. It’s exciting and motivating and profound. As awesome as that is, we can’t stop there. We have to be grounded in Scripture.

Our walk has to be a balance of heart and head. If we have only an experiential knowledge of Christ or only an intellectual knowledge of Christ, we will be off balance. We need to have both. We need to experience him and understand him through Scriptures.

Jesus set this example for us long ago with the early disciples. Now, we as his disciples need to continue the practice. How are you experiencing Jesus today? How are you grounding yourself in his Word?

Press On

Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him. Hosea 6:3 (NLT)

Zacchaeus. What do we know about him? When we talk about this story we comment on the fact that he was short. That’s why he climbed the tree. We comment on the fact that he was rich. And those riches got him some enemies. He came by his riches by working for the Romans, who were hated by the Jews. He collected taxes for them. As a matter of fact, he was so good at it that he was the head tax man. And everyone knew that he skimmed extra off the top of the taxes for himself.

There is one thing about him that we don’t talk about as much. In Luke 19 in the Message it says he wanted desperately to see Jesus. The Holy Spirit was working on Zacchaeus and his desire to see Jesus was more than he could handle.

So he went into the crowd of people that despised him. I am sure when he said “Excuse me, I need to get through.” they moved closer together to block his way. At that point, he could have given up. He could have said “I am not good enough to know Jesus. I’ll just go back to my work. What would he want to do with me anyway?” But he didn’t.

He followed that pull in his heart. He put aside any thoughts of what the people would say and he did something that could not have been easy in a longish tunic. He climbed a tree. He did everything he could to get a glimpse of the man that his heart was speaking about. He put action behind the longing.

What about you? God is calling to you every single moment. He is the one putting the desire in our hearts to know him; to seek him. What will you do about it? Will you keep doing the same thing you do every day expecting different results or will you make a change? Will you do something different in your life so you can see who Jesus is, so you can get to know him?

I love today’s verse. “Let us press on to know him.” Whether you have to change your routine, start or stop habits, get away for some quiet time or even if you have to climb a tree, press on. Do it! As Zacchaeus experienced, it will change your world.

God's Devotion

For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search and find my sheep. Ezekiel 34:11 (NLT)

So often in life we think we have to earn what is given to us. In some ways that is true. We earn a paycheck. We see the results of our work when we work in the yard, around the house or on a project. But it is not true with God. There is nothing that we can do that will draw God to us.

Why? Because God is always the one initiating the relationship. Always. Let’s take a look.

All throughout the Old Testament, when God’s people continually turned toward idols, God still showed up. He still rescued them and talked to them about turning back to him. I heard one speaker say “He rejected our rejection.”

His ultimate rejection of our rejection was when he sent Jesus. It just didn’t matter what we did. He still planned for our redemption.

Jesus was crucified so we could come into God’s presence. The veil into the Most Holy Place was torn in two so we would always have direct access to God.

Jesus sits at the right hand of God mediating for us. He is forever there so our access will be open.

The Holy Spirit was given to us to speak to our hearts and to intercede for us before God when we pray.

All of this was done way before any of us decided to choose God. It was done before we made any conscious decision to follow Jesus. God reached out to us first; while we were still a mess.

Do you see? God hearing you, God responding to your prayers, God showing up in your life; it has nothing to do with whether you are good or bad. It has nothing to do with whether you are praying the right prayer or thinking perfect thoughts. It has everything to do with the fact that God loves you. He wants to be in a relationship with you and he has done everything to help you reach out to him. He’s not going to stop just because of a mistake you made. He can’t. Your life with God is based on who God is, not who you are.

It's Not A Cake Walk

Yes, and everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. 2 Timothy 3:12 (NLT)

Yesterday, I talked about how when I was walking through something really hard I decided this couldn’t be God’s will. As I pondered that thought, I was surprised. Where did I get that idea? Where did I start to believe that God would only allow easy things in my life?

Unfortunately, it’s one of the false things we are taught in our society and it’s probably bled into our gospel. Life should be easy. Life should be happy. We shouldn’t suffer. This is flat out wrong. It is through our suffering and through our challenges that we grow. It’s through the things that push us that our character is strengthened. Most important, it is during these times when we see God more clearly.

Just so we are not going on my opinion here. Let’s look at some Bible texts.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted;
    he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.
The righteous person faces many troubles,
    but the Lord comes to the rescue each time. Psalm 34:18-19 (NLT)

God is our refuge and strength,
always ready to help in times of trouble. Psalm 46:1 (NLT)

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NIV)

So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good. 1 Peter 4:19 (NIV)

The Bible is pretty clear that when we follow Jesus, there will be suffering. It is also pretty clear that God will not leave us in the middle of it. He will be there, helping us, encouraging us and providing refuge.

My take away? If I love and follow Jesus I am going to experience suffering. Think back to all the people of the Bible and to Jesus himself. Everyone did. But I am not alone. God will not leave me to figure it out myself. Instead, he will grow me through it. I will learn more about him and his infinite love during these times than any other time in my life. I need to trust him.