You can't have one without the other

Nehemiah 1:6-9

 ⁶ listen to my prayer! Look down and see me praying night and day for your people Israel. I confess that we have sinned against you. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned! ⁷ We have sinned terribly by not obeying the commands, decrees, and regulations that you gave us through your servant Moses.
⁸ “Please remember what you told your servant Moses: ‘If you are unfaithful to me, I will scatter you among the nations. ⁹ But if you return to me and obey my commands and live by them, then even if you are exiled to the ends of the earth, I will bring you back to the place I have chosen for my name to be honored.’

As I read these verses I am immediately reminded of two things and one of the two is sometimes forgotten in today’s society. The first is confession. We must confess of our sins. An interesting point here is that Nehemiah is praying for his family that they too have sinned, just like Job did for his family. Perhaps something we should all do as well. The second thing the thing that does get forgotten is repentance. It’s one thing to ask for forgiveness for something and to never have any intention of changing your behavior. I think of a person who uses God’s name in vain and then says “forgive me Lord” and turns right around and does it over and over again. That just does not make sense and makes me think that when they ask for forgiveness they are just asking for permission to take the Lord’s name in vain again and again. You can't have one without the other. To repent is to turn away from and to hate what you just did.  You have to change your mind.  Have you changed your mind about sin? Do you truly repent of your sin?

The cool part is at the end of verse 9 if you confess and repent it does not matter what you have done, how far down the road you have went that Jesus will bring you back and we can all take comfort in that.

Do I need to draw you a picture?

When the time comes and no one knows when that is, Jesus will return and there will be judgment. So if you need me to draw you a picture here it is. This comes from Joel 2 and is thought to be written 400 to 900 years before the birth of Christ. I realize it is a bit more scripture than usual but I encourage you to read it and I’ll have just a few thoughts at the end.

 ¹ Sound the alarm in Jerusalem! Raise the battle cry on my holy mountain! Let everyone tremble in fear because the day of the Lord is upon us. ² It is a day of darkness and gloom, a day of thick clouds and deep blackness. Suddenly, like dawn spreading across the mountains, a great and mighty army appears. Nothing like it has been seen before or will ever be seen again. ³ Fire burns in front of them, and flames follow after them. Ahead of them the land lies as beautiful as the Garden of Eden. Behind them is nothing but desolation; not one thing escapes. ⁴ They look like horses; they charge forward like warhorses. ⁵ Look at them as they leap along the mountaintops. Listen to the noise they make—like the rumbling of chariots, like the roar of fire sweeping across a field of stubble, or like a mighty army moving into battle. ⁶ Fear grips all the people; every face grows pale with terror.
⁷ The attackers march like warriors and scale city walls like soldiers. Straight forward they march, never breaking rank. ⁸ They never jostle each other; each moves in exactly the right position. They break through defenses without missing a step. ⁹ They swarm over the city and run along its walls. They enter all the houses, climbing like thieves through the windows. ¹⁰ The earth quakes as they advance, and the heavens tremble. The sun and moon grow dark, and the stars no longer shine. ¹¹ The Lord is at the head of the column. He leads them with a shout. This is his mighty army, and they follow his orders. The day of the Lord is an awesome, terrible thing. Who can possibly survive?

 ¹² That is why the Lord says, “Turn to me now, while there is time. Give me your hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning. ¹³ Don’t tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not punish. ¹⁴ Who knows? Perhaps he will give you a reprieve, sending you a blessing instead of this curse. Perhaps you will be able to offer grain and wine
to the Lord your God as before.

Five thoughts from these verses

1.       The day is coming and Jesus will be at the head of the column leading the charge.

2.       It will be an awesome and terrible thing, depending which team you are on

3.       You can’t survive on your own

4.       Turn to him now while there is still time

5.       Jesus is eager to relent; perhaps you will get a reprieve.

No ticket to Hollywood here

Philippians 4:13
¹³ I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Sounds great doesn’t it. Does this mean I will win next year’s American Idol or So you think you can dance? I very well could make the show ,much like the people in this video.

But me winning is not very likely, just ask my family. I will have to admit that I have thought in the past that someday I would just wake up some morning and through some miracle of Christ I would become a good singer. I’m thinking that if God wanted me to be a good singer he would have done it by now.

But the point of all this is being realistic. This is one of those verses that some will pull out of context and say if you believe enough and have enough faith you can become a great singer, a great dancer, a pro athlete, wealthy beyond your imagination and truth is that’s a lie. All scripture has to be taken in context so with this well know verse I cannot assume that I am going to become extremely talented but what I can take away is the fact that when it comes to the problems, the burden, the struggles of life I can endure it, I can make it, I can even profit from it through Christ who strengthens me. In fact I can even be an encouragement to others because of it.

But you have to keep in mind it's not me but it's He.

Think about these things

[8] Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

(Philippians 4:8 ESV)

 What do you think about? Do you think about the troubles in life, the problems you are facing, or other things that bring you down? What Paul is telling us here is to think about things that will inspire worship of God. Because when you think about what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or worthy of praise you should not be able to keep yourself from praising God. You will praise and worship something; you can’t help it, that’s the way you were made. It’s just a matter of what you worship. All of the things mentioned in the list that we are to think about were all created by God, he was the author of all of these things so why not praise him for it and worship him for it. Think of a good worship song today, play it and sing along with it and just worship God. Granted worship is not just singing in fact it’s far from that. But sometimes for me anyway a good worship tune gets the ball rolling.

Give Peace a Chance

Give peace a chance. I’ll bet some of you who know me are thinking what in the world has happened to Mike. Give peace a chance? That does not sound like anything he would say. Normally you would be right, however in light of Philippians 4:6-7 my hope is that you would give peace a chance. Because it says:

 6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

 Would it have made more sense if the title of today’s blog would have been give the peace of God a chance? If you stop and think about it God’s peace is what we should be striving for while we are here on this earth. How much better off would you be if you were at peace with God? Now realize that peace here does not mean that everything in your world is going to be perfect in fact the truth is we live in a fallen world so it will be far from that, peace is not the absence of trouble. Peace is what you should strive for while in the midst of trouble. When you look at verse 7 it says His peace will guard your heart and your mind. If you can protect those two things your life here on earth will be so much better.  The best example I can give is a person who has been diagnosed as having a terminal illness and they are at peace with dying. That does not mean that they are not going to be going through hell. In fact they will have concerns about their loved ones the will be left here on earth, but the big picture is that they are at peace because of their relationship with Christ.

 Do you realize that you are terminal? You will die there is no getting around that the question becomes are you at peace? If you answered either yes or no, my advice would be to go back up and read verse 6 again.

That is how you get peace. So I ask you, give peace a chance.

Friend or Foe?

 Philippians 3:18
¹⁸ For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ.

 I find this verse very interesting. Again it’s one of those verses if you read it very quickly you may miss the meaning. I used to tend to read it as there are those who are just plain enemies of Jesus and those people to me would be very obvious. They would be atheists, agnostics, and all the really bad people.  Like in the Revolutionary War you had two sides, one wore blue the other red they lined up across from each other and fought. You knew who the enemy was. But when you read it slower and take in all in it’s much different, more like the war on Terror. You it’s much harder to tell friend from foe.  The first clue of this difference  should have been when Paul says with tears in his eyes. This tells me that the enemies list contains people that he really cares about. Secondly it does not say enemies of Christ but enemies of the cross of Christ. This means people who add or take away from how Jesus’ death on the cross provided for salvation of those he chooses. The people who add are the religious that think that by living a good life, by doing good things that’s how they get into Heaven. Then there is the other side who say that because that Jesus died on the cross they are saved so they can live however they want. Both sides are dead wrong. So the people Paul has tears for are people who claim to be, and really think that they are Christians but are not.

This saddens me as well there are churches everywhere who have enemies of the cross in them. This even includes Pastor’s, leaders and teachers. It is sad indeed.

Are you an enemy of the cross? Are you sure? To be sure you need to sit under good biblical teaching, study God’s word and stay in constant prayer. Because salvation comes solely from the work of Christ on the cross, there is not one thing that you can do to earn it and you need to live a good life because of it. Choose your side carefully because when you read the Bible it tells you which side wins.

 “The enemies of the Cross of Christ” are bright with the whitewash of outside godliness, while they are rotten within. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Just flush it!

Philippians 3:7-8

⁷ I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.⁸ Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ.

A lot of times when I read Philippians 3 I am drawn strait to these verses and I tend to think about all of the “stuff” in our lives that when compared to Christ is garbage. However when you read it in context with the first six verses you can tell that Paul is talking about religion, and indeed religion is garbage. Some Bible translations even use the word dung in place of garbage. Religion is about rules and things where Christianity is about Christ. In the first 6 verses of this chapter Paul says at one point in his life he was so religious that went around killing Christians.

Satan uses religion as a weapon in his war with Christians and he uses it very well. Religion has done more damage to the Gospel message than you would ever imagine. Christianity is about relationships not religion. Religion is about following the rules; it’s about symbols, rituals, leaders, and the like, where true Christianity is about knowing Jesus and your relationship with him and nothing more. If may sound strange but there is no room for religion in the church.

Jesus was not religious and Hitler was, so don’t be religious. We all need to run from religion because it is dung. So if religion starts creeping into your life or if you have already become religious just flush it and concentrate on your relationship with Jesus because in the end that’s all that matters everything else is dung.