Some good news of the good news

I recently went through an unnecessary dry season in my walk with Christ. The reason I say unnecessary is because I could have come to Him in brokenness and need way sooner, begging Him for the power of His Spirit to overcome my sin and defeated life. He would have met me in an instant. But instead, I wallowed in my defeat and discouragement, buying into the lies of the enemy that I was unworthy and unfit to even come to God, and that I was doomed to a life of mediocrity in my faith. I am glad to say that God provided me with the right reminders at the right time on the baptism (immersion, filling) of the Holy Spirit and the prerequisites to receive Him. He also opened my eyes to so many verses of the New Testament that I have known on a head level, but now feel like I am coming to know in a deep way in my heart.

A new look at suffering and the hope we can have in the midst of it

I was reading in Philippians 3 the other day, and a phrase in verse 10 caught my eye in a really fresh, new way. Verse 10-11 reads: "that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead."

The whole verse was really powerful to me, but particularly what I highlighted jumped out to me and made me ponder it. Anytime I see the word suffering in the New Testament I usually immediately think of physical pain or losing my loved ones. The New Testament writers really embraced suffering in a way that I really desire to be able to, but usually feel so far from, and even a little bit afraid of. For the relatively small amount of suffering I have experienced, I have seen God's goodness, faithfulness, presence, and sovereignty so clearly! I know His grace is sufficient for everything we go through, and this helps me in thinking about suffering.

A Short Thought on Self Control and Discipline

We live in a culture that screams to us at every corner, “you are justified in having all of your desires met, and if you don’t have them met, something is wrong.” Thus, our desires can easily come to master us, keeping us in bondage and often escalating out of control. On this topic, Dallas Willard states, “desire itself is not bad, but desire is not meant to master our lives. It isn’t that desires or feelings are overwhelming, but they are overwhelming if you concede to them time and time again.” In contrast,

A good exercise: Who do you want to BE??

We spend so much time in our lives (and culture) focusing on what we want to DO with our lives. This is a prevailing question young people ask themselves as they navigate their way through college and their twenties (and even thirties and forties and fifties too:) It is interesting though, that who we are to our core so significantly impacts what we do, how we do it, what we say, how good or bad our relationships are, and how we live out our Christian faith and life on the whole. Who we are matters so much more at the end of the day than what we do, because who we are is the stuff of eternal value when we stand before King Jesus one day. So why don't we spend more time truly caring about and thinking about who we want to be and what the true condition of our heart is despite what others see or think of us? Someone once asked me to do an exercise where I was to write down the answer to two questions: Who do you want to be? And what is at stake if you are not each of those things? After going through this exercise, it was quite illuminating all that was at stake if I did not possess each character quality that I genuinely desired to be. The following was one example, and I want to challenge you to do this exercise too!

Repentance prepares the way for the Lord

I have often wondered how to explain the fullness of the gospel to a new or not yet believer because it is sometimes hard to properly explain or understand the union of the following three truths:

1. We are saved ONLY by grace through faith in Jesus

2. Repentance (turning from sin and idols) is a necessary and integral part of coming to Christ for the first time (salvation) and walking with Jesus for a lifetime.

3. It is not legalistic or preaching "works salvation" to say that repentance and grace go together.

I feel like my spirit knows how to understand these truths together without becoming legalistic or without preaching works salvation, but it has often felt hard for me to explain it to others without feeling like I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth. Especially when sharing the gospel with a seeking person, I love to share about the uniqueness of righteousness and merit with God being rooted in grace, not works. This sets Christianity and the person of Jesus apart from every other religion in the world! 

Top 14 most influential sermons to me this past year in no particular order

This was really hard for me to narrow down bc I have heard so many awesome sermons in the past year:) But here they are:

When bad things happen

A very common question that I hear from people of all stages of faith, life, and age is: "why does God allow evil and suffering to happen?" Someone asked me this question a few days ago and I honestly just totally blanked on most of the answers that I have ever heard in response to that question. But what did pop into my mind was something along the lines of the following thoughts:

We can't really know why, but what can we know about God in the midst of a broken world based on the authority of the Word of God and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus?

From Indwelling Life, To True Worship, To Christ Centered Mission

Three things I desire for followers of Christ found in John 4

3 key verses in John 4:

1. (v13-14): Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
2. (v. 23-24): Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
3. (v. 31-34): Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about...My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work."

So a brief summary of a progression of faith that can be gathered from these verses is: from being filled with the wellspring of life to worshiping God in spirit and truth to doing the will of the Father.

Christ like love

 Christ Like Love: A good devotional for the week by Zac Poonen

Jesus gave His disciples a new commandment just before He went to the cross. They were to love one another as He had loved them (Jn. 13:34). It is this last phrase that makes Jesus' command impossible to fulfill without God's grace.

What is the distinctive feature of the love of Christ? Surely, it is the cross on which He died for us. So when He tells me to love my brother as He loved me, it is a call to follow His example and to die to self in my relationship with my brother. Self-denial is to characterize my relationship with other members in Christ's Body. This and nothing less than this is true Christian love. When we are told that "we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (1 Jn. 3:16), it is not a reference to physical death, but to something far more difficult. It is easier to die once as a martyr than to lay down our self-life many times every day in our relationship with our fellow-believers. But it is to the latter that Jesus calls us.

Exploring Christianity?

These are just some of the things that I have come to find compelling, inspiring, hopeful, exciting, and good news in my faith journey with Jesus. I start this entry with some more head level, logical points about the validity of Jesus’ claims to be God and his resurrection. I definitely do not flesh out these points or defend them in full because that is not the point of this entry and you can read many books on this. I would recommend More than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell, and Reason for God, by Tim Keller to start with. Then I move into more heart level, personal issues to wrestle with in coming to faith. Again, it is not a complete document on all the good news of Jesus, just some thoughts. So take it for what it’s worth! After you read this, I hope you will dive into the Bible yourself and ask God to reveal Himself to you as you read. I would recommend starting with the Gospel of John. You can read a short "birds eye view" commentary on this gospel by a pastor named Ray Stedman here.

meaning of names in geneology from Adam to Noah

Meaning in      Meaning in

Hebrew            English

Adam               Man

Seth                 Appointed

Enosh              Mortal

Kenan              Sorrow

Mahalalel         The Blessed God

Jared               Shall come down

Enoch              Teaching

Methuselah      His death shall bring

Lamech           The Despairing

Noah               Rest, or comfort.

So in a sentence, the first ten names in the geneology of the Bible reads: Man appointed mortal sorrow. The blessed God shall come down teaching. His death shall bring the despairing rest, or comfort. 

Read the introduction (and more if you want!) of God is the Gospel by John Piper here.  It is amazing! A few stand out quotes to me were:

When I say that God is the Gospel I mean that the highest, best, final, decisive good of the gospel, without which no other gifts would be good, is the glory of God in the face of Christ revealed for our everlasting enjoyment. The saving love of God is God's commitment to do everything necessary to enthrall us with what is most deeply and durably satisfying, namely himself. Since we are sinners and have no right and no desire to be enthralled with God, therefore God's love enacted a plan of redemption to provide that right and that desire. The supreme demonstration of God's love was the sending of his Son to die for our sins and to rise again so that sinners might have the right to approach God and might have the pleasure of his presence forever.

The critical question for our generation--and for every generation--is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there?

A powerful wake up call and word from Britt Merrick. His words have some powerful authority behind them given what he has been going through: his six year old daughter has had cancer two times now in the last year, so these words are not empty in the least. 

The following videos (below this post) are excerpts from an interview with NT Wright about the resurrection, heaven and hell, etc. These were an awesome reminder to me today that: 1. Jesus really raised from the dead, and that changes everything! 2. Our ultimate destination is not "heaven" or "hell" but new creation and either being with God as a fully whole human or being apart from him without his image in us anymore. 3. Our choices in this life matter a lot. 4. We have a lot of work to do with God in this broken world. It is cool he lets us take part in his redemption story, in making all things new. 5. I cannot wait to be with Christ in a real body that cannot be destroyed in the new creation where the heavenly realm has invaded this physicality as we now know it stewarding this new creation. That is going to be unimaginably awesome! Watch these short videos below!

Historical Resurrection of Christ? NT Wright responds (HD)

What Does Heaven Look Like? NT Wright on 100 Huntley Street (HD)

What Will We Do In Heaven? NT Wright on 100 Huntley Street (HD)

What Is Hell Like? Does It Even Exist? NT Wright on 100 Huntley Street (HD)

What is Purgatory? NT Wright on 100 Huntley Street (HD)

The difference between Marys and Marthas

A question that I heard at church the other day was, "where is a place in your heart that you are experiencing tension?" Because the conviction of the Holy Spirit creates some tension in our spirit.

Today, I asked myself this question and this was my answer: I realize that the tension I am feeling is whether or not I am going to be more of a Mary or a Martha (Luke 10:38-42), especially as it pertains to our approach to ministry. The Martha spirit (in ministry) is marked by:

• wanting to feel in control
• tackling the to do list before sitting at Jesus' feet (or sitting at Jesus' feet only to get something from Him, like direction on what to do at bible study in my case)
• wanting to have a neat and tidy plan, to have clear cut goals and programs and curriculums
• "serving" the Lord by doing so many things for Him, but not sitting at his feet first and more, or not asking Him if He even wants you to be doing all of those things.
• trying to get the Mary's to get off their butts and help us already! We have to DO something.
• not genuinely to the core wanting to depend recklessly on the Holy Spirit. That is hard and scary and outside of the comfort zone.