IT’S FRIDAY!!!!!  That’s the equivalent of one cup of coffee talking there, and a whole lot of relief that this week is almost behind me / us.  This message will be short because one it doesn’t need to be long, and two, I’m currently doing 3 peoples jobs while my boss and another person are out on maternity leave… during month / quarter end close… awesome… haha.

That’s actually the word for the day – just that each of us has a lot going on in life, and at times this can seemingly be overwhelming if we forget our faith – that we are sons of God, a God who loves us immensely.  I hope you will be encouraged by the following passage from God’s Word to us:

Matthew 6:25-34

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ²⁸And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³²For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  ³⁴ “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

I’m going to be MIA for a while – I’m headed up to Louisville this next week to visit a friend/seminary and be at the T4G conference.  Some of the best sermons I’ve ever heard preached www.t4g.org you should check them out sometime.  Anyway, I’ll be back next Thurs, hope you all have a great week!

I’m often amazed by the lies that I’m convinced of.  More interesting is that the one person deceiving me, is myself, ha ha.  Often times I can convince myself that something is “ok” for me because I’ll have the willpower to withstand temptation.  What’s interesting is when my “truth” and God’s Word differ.  For example, I may think I can withstand temptation – God tells us just the opposite – we should RUN from sin.  The picture given in the Bible of this is Joseph, a man chosen by God to provide for the nation of Israel during a time of famine.  Joseph was a servant of the king.  Joseph was confronted by the king’s wife, who “offered herself” to him.  His response was not to check out the scenery, but literally he ran, even leaving his coat behind after the king’s wife grabbed onto it, to try to hold him there.  I digress, my point is that if I can’t even trust the truth I’m telling myself, where do I look for truth about how to live my life?

It’s quite humbling actually; God is teaching me that I really don’t know anything.  I don’t have any advice to give.  I don’t have any wisdom to offer.  I don’t have any truth to bring to others of my own, especially if I’m able to deceive myself, ha ha.  God says in John 14:6 – “⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  There is not truth apart from God, God IS Truth, just as He IS Love, He IS the only Way, and there is NO life apart from Him.   

This is what Jesus is saying when he tells the Pharisees in John 8:31:32 – ” ³¹So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, ³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  The Truth that sets us free is Jesus.  How we know Him is by abiding (resting in / meditating in / treasuring / memorizing to plant in our hearts) in His Word.  I hope this is encouraging to you, and God is richly blessing your time with Him in His Word.  May we all know the Truth that is from God alone.  Know you’re prayed for.

Grace and Peace,
Adam

Hopefully you all are well.  One of the most interesting parts of following God is simply that – He does not call us to specific rules, He tells us instead to stop following the world’s wisdom / pursuits, and to follow Him.

Mark 8:34 – “And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Jesus’ knows the sinful state of man, and that sanctification (progressive forming into the image of God in holiness) does not happen overnight.  He simply says that for us, who believe, that He is God in the flesh, that He made atonement for our sin on the cross, and God raised Him from the dead (He raised Himself proving He IS God, and His sacrifice was full and acceptable) – for us who believe and hope in Him alone, He doesn’t seek perfect people, only followers.

Following Christ isn’t easy, and at times it can be painful.  Following Christ may mean losing friendships, losing family members, losing your personal freedom, or even your life.  Here’s my encouragement to you – the whole earth, the whole of creation in the universe, cannot contain the glory of God that is to be revealed to us.  Every day, every decision, every step is drawing us closer to our God, if we love Him, and follow Him.  Hope you all have a great day!

Grace and Peace,
Adam

Often times people may look at my life – the things that I “passed up on” during my twenties and tell me that my life sounds pretty boring.  I try to explain to them why my life isn’t as they perceive it, and in doing so find that they understand one part, but not the latter.  I tell them they are mistaken in two ways – I didn’t “pass up” as much as I should have probably (this part they can understand) and secondly, my joy is rooted in knowing God, which despite any outward perceptions, is the furthest thing from “boring” (this part unfortunately they don’t).

I’m hopeful that each of you has found a similar hope and joy in knowing Jesus Christ rightly, as Creator, Lord, Savior, and friend.  Whatever, joy you have found in part now, know that it is only a glimmer of the joy we will have in knowing God in eternity.  Whatever struggles you have now, they will all be gone.  This is because in Heaven, sin, which hinders our growth and joy will not follow us – Christ condemened it in the flesh on the cross.  As we know God more and more from His Word, the Spirit within us moves to conform us into His image, but in Heaven we will be perfectly conformed into His image, because we will see Him perfectly, without sin.  Our hope as Christians is for that day, to stand approved before God because of what Christ has done in our place, and in knowing and worshipping God, have a fullness of joy for all eternity we cannot even fathom.  I hope this eternal mindset follows you today, and God blesses you richly in Him.

1 John 1:2 – “²Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

Grace and Peace,
Adam

When I was in second grade, the cool thing to do was read…ok probably not, but nevertheless my school had a competition to see who could read the most books during the year, and I wanted to win.  Now thankfully at a 2nd grade level, any book over 15 pages I think counted as 1 book, and any book over 100 pages counted as 2 books.  I ended up reading 594 books throughout the school year.  At the end of the year when I awaited my prize for this year-long competition, I was awarded…. a book.  Needless to say I wasn’t very enthusiastic about reading for a long time after that.

Some of us don’t like to read.  This carries over to our time reading God’s Word – the Bible.  I’m not going to sit here at try to tell you every day I wake up I’m itching to get into God’s Word – although I do think that grows with time.  What I want you to think about the Word as is like working out.  If you eat right, but you never go to the gym, you can have all sorts of great ideas about how to get into shape, and may see some small amount of change, but not much.  Likewise, as a Christian, if you love God and want to be molded into His image, He may use things like wise Christian counsel, etc to help some, but not much will happen in your life.  My encouragement to myself and to you is to treasure the Word of God, to value and pursue truth from it as the means by which God reveals Himself to us, and will transform us into His image.  This is another one of those where I could throw down about 50 verses, but Psalm 1 is very applicable:

¹Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
²but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
³He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers. ⁴The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.  ⁵Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
⁶for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Grace and Peace,
Adam

Each of us is confronted with trials daily.  Some greater than others, some even unto the point of despair.  Here recently, I myself, have probably been more stressed out that I have ever been in my life (no exaggeration), and I know some of you are likewise going through difficult times related to work, health issues, a sin struggle, etc.  I’m sure this NEVER happens to any of you, ha ha, but I have found myself asking God, “why?”, a lot.  Often times it is futile to try to understand EXACTLY why things happen, but God has been pressing three truths into me about the “why” of suffering or trials that I wanted to share, and hopefully encourage you all with.

The first reason is we struggle to be able to identify (in a minute way) more with the suffering and trials of Christ.  Our desire is to know Him, and our Christ suffered much.

The second is so that we will be able to comfort others when they encounter similar sufferings and trials, as well as encourage them with the hope we have in Christ in those times.

Lastly, which ultimately is the root of both of the above.  We struggle and go through trials because God loves us.  He loves us enough to push us beyond the fronts we put up to others, to reveal the true condition of our heart / sin, comfort us by pressing us closer to the cross in total dependence upon Jesus day-to-day, and thus strengthen our faith in Him.  There are so many scriptures I want to share here – more than would be helpful right now, so I will just share one.  This is definitely a topic worth covering in more detail at some point.

James 1:2-4 ” ² Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, ³for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. ⁴And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Know you’re prayed for, and I’m always available to you all.

Grace and Peace,
Adam

I want to caveat up front that as a fellow sinner, I fall short in my own battle against sin more often than I wish.  This is not meant to be a discouragement in our failings, but an encouragement to strengthen your resolve in repentance (turning from) from your sin, and an encouragement that this ongoing battle is evidence of God at work in you, thereby giving you assurance of your salvation.

An important question to ask yourself is “what sin am I aware of in my life”?  The follow-up question is – “do I really want to rid myself of this sin – does my love for God exceed my love for this sin?”  The latter question is often tougher if we’re honest with ourselves, and our actions often are better evidence of our heart than what we can convince ourselves of in our mind.  God doesn’t think sin is funny or ok – He died for it.  God says this is how we should approach our sin in Mark 9:43-48:

“⁴³ And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. ⁴⁵ And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. ⁴⁷ And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.'”

Now before anyone does anything dumb and mutilates yourself, this is not literal…  I don’t want to see any one-handed pictures sent to me.  I do want you all to take today to ask yourself honestly – what sin have I been harboring that I need to seek the Lord with?  Ask God to make your delight in Him be all fulfilling, such that no temptation would sway you from Him.  Scripture verse for the day:

2 Corinthians 13:5 – “⁵Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”

Grace and Peace,
Adam