Romans 6:4 – “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Friends, God has ordained that this daily fight of faith be fought together, as we all look to Jesus, our enduring hope.  Today, I want to share encouragement of how we are to view ourselves, in light of the gospel, to live in freedom from sin and joy in God.  In some ways, when God first calls us from darkness to light, faith is simple.  We are given grace to see that we are sinners, without hope in ourselves, separated from our holy Creator God, and we cry out to Him to save us, trusting in the death and resurrection of Jesus to secure our salvation.

So we plead for the mercy of God, sometimes alone amidst a trial, sometimes in church, sometimes over coffee or a meal with a Christian brother or sister, or in a myriad of different ways.  In that moment, we ceased to be children of darkness under the just wrath of God, and became, by God’s grace beloved children of God, holy and righteous in Christ.  However we viewed ourselves previously, God has told us that we are a new creation in Jesus (2 Cor 5:17), yet we still have sin.  If sin has been defeated, how should we fight against its deception now that we have come to God through Jesus?

Romans 6 expands this in detail, but we fight for faith in a similar way to how we began.  We still come to God humbly in dependence upon him, but instead of asking him to save us, we declare with Him, that when Jesus died on the cross, our flesh and all its indwelling sin was present with Him and was put to death.  In the same way, when Jesus was resurrected to new life, we have the same life as Christ lives in us.  We are united to Christ both in the death He died, and the life He lives.  We ask God’s mercy to keep us from temptation and deliver us from evil, but as those who are trusting in Christ in us for the victory.  We look to Christ, we trust Him, and we run to Him in all things, all day, every day.

This is a marathon, not a sprint, but God has promised to see us through until the end.  (Phil 1:6)  As temptation to pursue joy apart from God seeks to deceive you, remember who you are in Christ – your sin, your desire for the world instead of God, is dead, and you have been set free to a new life of everlasting joy in Christ.  1 Peter 1:6-9 – “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

Grace and Peace,

Adam

For much of my life as a Christian, there have been efforts toward killing sin and progressing in righteousness.  How I’ve pursued this though, has been marked by good intentions, but bad execution.  I would look at my life and see something that I knew was sinful or out of place with God’s character and say, ok, I need to work on that.  I need to stop doing that, or maybe, I need to start doing this, etc.  So I would pray about it, I would maybe set up some boundaries, and maybe get some accountability from others around it.  It all sounds good, right?  It might work for a time, but it would never last, especially with sin that was truly a struggle for me.

In Romans 7:7-8 it says “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”  But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.” So by focusing on my sin “problem”, and telling myself not to do something anymore, only created in me a law that created in me the desire for that thing all the more.  This is our sin nature, this is the depth of our depravity, and what Jesus came to save us from.  We often think of salvation in this way – that Jesus saved us from ourselves, saved us from sin, and saved us from hell/judgment.  I never mean to make light of this, because without Jesus breaking the bondage of sin, we would have no hope – but I want to exhort all of us, that the greatest part of our salvation was not in our being saved “from” things, but in being saved “to” Someone, namely God.

1 Peter 3:18 – “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”

Romans 8:3-6 – “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

In God’s Word, we’ll see a lot of imagery that talks about how we should set the mind on the Spirit (Rom 8), setting our minds on the things of God (Matt 16/Mark 8), setting our minds on things above (Col 3:2), put on the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 13), put on Christ (Gal 3), put on the new self (Eph 4).  All of this speaks to what it means to walk not in our flesh, but walk by faith, walk in the Spirit of God to seek Him in all things.  In looking to Jesus in this way, the laws of God will no longer be a burden to bear, but the overflow of our fellowship with Jesus.  So all of the things I ought to do, like read my Bible, pray, avoid temptation, seek forgiveness, love/serve others sacrificially, are no longer checkboxes I have to complete, but the result of my embracing my righteousness in Jesus, and pursuing greater fellowship with Him.  How freeing is that?  There are not many things to do, there is only one – Look to Jesus.  I hope this is as much of an encouragement to you today, as it is to me.  We are all prone to wander, helpless apart from Christ, but He is near to us, desirous for us to go to Him for our good and His glory.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

(Christian) “Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread” – DT Niles

Friends, I want to give you more than just encouragement today.  I want to share with you my own life and experience in the hopes that in doing so, you would feel greater freedom to pursue joy in the Lord.  I’m 36 years old, and as best as I can tell, I have been a Christian for closing in on 30 years now.  God was gracious and merciful to save me at a young age, but that salvation did not cause me to instantly be turned into a beacon of righteousness.  Quite the contrary, my life has been marked by sin, broken promises to God and to others, and periods of my life where you would have had to strain to see any resemblance of Christ in me.  Even for those who would look outwardly at my life and see good things, that only means that I had become a good liar, because apart from Christ, there is nothing good in me.  When I have turned from Christ and fallen to sin, sometimes for extended periods of time, I found myself in places I never would have thought I’d be.  I have been the prodigal son of Luke 15 more times than I can count.

Why do I share all of this?  Because Christianity is not about where we are at a moment in time, but where our hope is found.  In the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, there is a turning point for the younger brother in verse 17-21 that says “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!”  I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”

Three observations – First – “He came to himself” is incredibly important.  Amidst suffering, amidst trials, amidst sin it is the grace and mercy of God to sinners that they see their desperate situation and need for God.  If you can go on sinning against God and he does not blow your world up to bring you to an end of yourself, that should give you great concern as to whether you belong to God at all.

Second – The prodigal never ceased to be a son.  The love of the father was always with him, even as he left and pursued pleasure in the world.  The father hurt because he knew the pain the son was headed for by leaving Him, but had compassion for Him always.

Lastly – the son knew where to go for bread, and went after it.

In 30 years as a Christian, in my own life, I can say that the greatest evidence of salvation/the Spirit of God in someone is what their reaction is to suffering, trials, and devastation from sin.  Do they run to God, or do they run from Him?  Where does someone turn to when they have lost all hope?  Although I would spare everyone the suffering and baggage of death, loss, poverty, brokenness/destruction from sin – and could easily turn here to encourage hard fought spiritual disciplines / accountability, I will save that for another message.  I will say there is greater hope in me for those who turn to God amidst those things, than for those who never experienced those things, and/or have never been desperate for God.  Looking back on my life, I hate my sin, I hate many of the decisions I’ve made, and people I’ve hurt along the way.  For the sake of others I would wish I could go back, but for the sake of my own soul, I count those things as blessings for the sake of knowing the depth of my condition as a sinner before a righteous and holy God.  Paul says is this way in Philippians 3 – “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Christian, Jesus is the bread of life.  Everything else is loss; it is nothing, and will never satisfy the longings of your soul.  As one beggar to another, as God gives you grace to see your sinful/broken state, how desperate your need for Him is right now, and how great a love He has for you, run to Him – pursue Him like a desperate beggar daily.  Ask Him to satisfy your heart’s cravings, and you will find Him to be more than enough.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

A word of caution – it has been said that soft preaching makes for hard hearts, and hard preaching makes for soft hearts.  Today’s message will not be an easy one to receive.  No one likes hearing about how bad they are.  My hope is that if after reading a bit you are compelled to stop, you press on, because the foundation of our relationship with God is predicated upon a right understanding of ourselves apart from Him, and also a right understanding of ourselves in Him through Jesus.  Our joy in God is directly correlated with the depth of our understanding of the love of God towards us in Jesus.  Those who have been forgiven of little will love little, and those who have been forgiven of much will love much.  (Luke 7:41-43)

Do you think of yourself primarily as a “good person”?  Most people define that idea by some self-determined level of morality, whereby they don’t do certain actions that others do, like steal, lie, murder, etc. Others will compare themselves to those around them, and judging their morality against the others, and self-determining themselves to be superior will say that they are “good”, meaning they are better than those around them.  No one would argue that certain behavior and actions are good relative to others, but God has some harsh words for those who claim that they are “good” in themselves or even capable of any good at all.

 Mark 10:17-18 – “And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”  (This was Jesus actually pressing into the person that He is God, but we’ll save that for another message)

Romans 3:9-12 – “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:  “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

In Romans (quoting Psalm 14) God presses this further to say no one DOES good.  In your life right now, you may go to church, you may read your Bible, you may pray, you may be generous in your money to give, you may serve others, and you feel good about those things.  Are you proud of yourself for doing those things?  Do you secretly hope that others see your “good actions” and think better of you for it?  Do you do those things in your own power, without giving God thanks for His provision and gifts to you to enable you to do those things?  When God sees your “good” works, do you know what he sees?  Filthy rags.  Isaiah 64:6 – “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment”

From our first day, until our last day, we are sinners before a righteous and Holy God, incapable of any good.  We may sin less, but we will never be sinless, and God hates sin.  In Ephesians 2:3, God says we are “by nature children of wrath”.  Sin is not something we do, it is something we are in our very nature.  God says of us in Genesis 6:5 – “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

John Piper defines sin (taken out of Romans 1) in this way –

Sinning is any feeling or thought or speech or action that comes from a heart that does not treasure God over all other things. And the bottom of sin, the root of all sinning, is such a heart — a heart that prefers anything above God, a heart that does not treasure God over all other person and all other things. Or, as I once tried to express it in a message years ago. What is sin? Sin is:

§  The glory of God not honored.

§  The holiness of God not reverenced.

§  The greatness of God not admired.

§  The power of God not praised.

§  The truth of God not sought.

§  The wisdom of God not esteemed.

§  The beauty of God not treasured.

§  The goodness of God not savored.

§  The faithfulness of God not trusted.

§  The promises of God not believed.

§  The commandments of God not obeyed.

§  The justice of God not respected.

§  The wrath of God not feared.

§  The grace of God not cherished.

§  The presence of God not prized.

§  The person of God not loved.

Friends, if you see God’s definition of sin, and understand the depth of hopelessness in our condition, and believe that our God is Holy and judges in righteousness, this should undo any sense of pride you can muster.  If you can read God’s word, and feel good about yourself, at best your knowledge of yourself and God is lacking, and at worst, you are a self-justifying Pharisee that will hear the tragic words of God spoken of in Matthew 7:21-23 – “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”  God be merciful to you, if even in reading that you look to your works for righteousness.  It isn’t that you can’t do enough good to make up for your bad deeds, it is that you cannot do any good deed, not even one.  If a prophet of God declares his righteous deeds to be filthy rags before a Holy God, what do you believe you will be able to offer God?  Nothing.  Everything in God’s Word, every letter of the law, was meant to point you to one indisputable fact – you have NO hope before God in yourself.  None.  What is left, when God mercifully allows you to come to an end of yourself is this – you cry out for a savior.  As long as we dwell in these sin indwelt bodies, every day, we cry out for our Savior.  Christians ought to be the most humble people on Earth, because there is nothing that we point to and say “I did this”, first and foremost as it relates to our salvation.

For those who know God, who have been called by Him, we know that although we were dead in our trespasses, God was gracious and merciful to save us.  Ephesians 2:4-10 –  “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Romans 5:8-10 – “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

Christ is all.  Jesus came not to save righteous “good” people, but he came to seek and save the lost, the broken, the weary, the poor in spirit.  Therefore, if anyone of us is to boast, let it be in this, that we know Jesus, and trust in Him.  There is hope in nothing else.  Our love for God will grow with our knowledge of how desperate our need for Him is, and how great a salvation we have in Jesus.  As we grow in the knowledge of God, so too will our joy in Him grow as we walk with Him humbly, and the peace of God will confound those around us.  The love of God towards us in Jesus becomes to us all satisfying.  The longing of our hearts that sought out lesser means of satisfaction through sin, that would never satisfy – have a greater provision in Jesus.  Our hearts find their fill in Him.  Our love from God and towards God becomes to us the means by which we can love and serve the unloveable, because we know that there was and is nothing in us worthy of God’s love – it was grace and mercy, so we display the grace and mercy of God to a broken world.  Our reconciliation with God now, produces in us a hope for a greater future reconciliation – face to face, in death where sin is no more, and there is no daily battle to fight for faith, but our faith becomes sight.  We have the greatest hope of any, because we had no hope, but were saved by a living God who saves the hopeless.  Instead of resting in our goodness, lets strive to rest in the finished work of the one who is Good.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

All,

I hope this finds you well!  I realize I have not written in a long time.  God pressed it on my heart recently to pick up things again.  As always, know that you are loved and prayed for and as always, I only want to be an encouragement, not a hindrance or contribution to email clutter!  So if any want to be taken off of my emails, please let me know, and I’ll do so.

Given the number of persons being written to, I imagine there are a great many different seasons of life being encountered.  For some, this is a season of gladness and prosperity, and for others it is a season trials and brokenness.  My encouragement today, is that Jesus will meet you wherever you are, and has a word all of us.  I’ve titled this Word for the Day message, “a new beginning”, because each day, each morning, and each moment is an opportunity for a new beginning.  The mercies of God never come to an end, they are new every morning (Lam 3:23-24).  Each of us, regardless of what season we are in, start off the day the same way facing the knowledge that there is nothing good in us.  We know that unless we daily (and moment by moment) choose to pick up our cross and follow after Jesus, we will follow after our flesh’s desires to reject God.  Paul says this in Romans 7:18 this way – “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.”   Knowing this, every one of us each morning, and as often as we pray, must in humility and repentance call out for God’s mercy and grace, to keep us from temptation, deliver us from evil, and grant our hearts superior affections for the Creator God, rather than the things in the world.  This is the heartbeat of knowledge of sin and faith in Jesus, and is like breathing for a Christian.

As an aside, I can speak of my own life, and tell you that whenever I believed things to be “going well” and whenever I rested in my own abilities, instead of approaching God in humility, I fell away from God and into sin 100% of the time.  I did not heed the warning from 1 Corinthians 10:12 – “let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” God is merciful to discipline and restore us out of His love (Heb 12:4-5), but how much better for us, if we simply walked in humble repentance from our flesh and self-seeking will to seek and beg for greater joy in the Lord each day?

So if we approach God with a spirit of humility today in this way, what does God promise?  2 Chronicles 7:14 – “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”  Psalm 149:4 – “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.”  James 4:6 – “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:6-7 – “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”   God promises to hear you if you humble yourself before him.  He promises to give grace to you, and to heal your heart.  He promises to bear your burdens as you bring them to Him.  How does God accomplish this?  Jesus.  “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6-7) God will strengthen you “with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Eph 3:16-19)  Jesus is our only hope and provision.  All of the promises of God to us find their “Yes” in Jesus (2 Cor 1:20).  He is our portion, and the Love of God towards us through Jesus is more than enough to satisfy the longing of our hearts, and more than enough for a new beginning.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

This morning, I came into work, prepared for a busy week as I try to wrap things up to prepare for taking a few weeks off.  A busy time, but a good one.  That mood was broken, when I got a message from someone I know telling me that one of my good friends, someone that I had plans to see soon, died over the weekend.  This was not someone in their 70s or 80s being lost to cancer or another disease, she was in her early 30s with a husband and three children all under the age of 7.  She was among the greatest women of God I have personally known, and considered myself honored to have known her.

As I write this I’m convicted of my own sin, of how easy it is to neglect my salvation through Jesus, and reminded of how we are exhorted from Psalm 90:9-12 – “all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh.  The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.  Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?  So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”

Each day is a gift from God.  We will have to give an account of how we stewarded each day given to us by God.  That should evoke a healthy fear in us – as Psalm 90 says above – to consider the power of God’s anger and wrath – because we were Created and serve a Holy God.  Much more, we have an inheritance through Jesus that grants us infinite joy for eternity in His presence.  “Since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe;  for our God is a consuming fire.” – Hebrews 12:28-29

Brothers and sisters in Christ, each of us will stand before God, our Creator.  We will be face to face with Jesus.  That reality should put into focus the content of our lives – the weight of that moment, of who God is, the weight of that moment, of who we are as sinners, and the weight of that moment of how great a salvation we have in Jesus.  How great news to know that our Judge is our Savior, that the Judge has already borne the wrath of God’s Holiness against sin.  How great news to know Jesus’s love is greater than His wrath, and His love is affixed to you.

Consider the warning from Hebrews 2:1-2 – “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.  For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?”  I saw this as one sinner to another, who grew up in the cultural Christianity of the south – there is no such thing as a luke-warm Christian.  We either believe or we do not, and our lives will bear that out in one direction or another.  As Romans 2:13 says, “it is not the hearers of the law that are righteous, but the doers of the law who will be justified”, and as Jesus says in Luke 6:46 – “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you?”  We must be honest with one another, because anything less is not-loving, even if it seems harsh.

1 Peter 1:13-19 –  “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.  As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”  And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”

If you are reading this, and have drifted from your salvation – you are still alive, today is the day of salvation for each of us.  Today we decide who we will serve, either our Savior, or ourselves, and we will receive whichever we choose for eternity, either our Savior, or ourselves apart from Him.  Moreover, there are many among us eager, in need of hearing and knowing about Jesus and the salvation He brings – our days are to be rich in making much of our Savior.  Our joy in Him will be multiplied as we seek after him day by day.

Philippians 3:8-16 – “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.  Only let us hold true to what we have attained.”

Keep running the race, finish the course set before you, our greatest joy in this world does not compare to the joy that awaits us in eternity with Christ.  Meet and work together with other Christians, this is God’s help to you and design for His Kingdom’s work.   Finally, rest in the grace and peace purchased for you by the blood of Christ – do not let yesterday determine how you spend today.

Blessings,

Adam

Apologies for delays in writing.  My hope is that this finds all of you well, and that you are finding encouragement each day through God’s Word, His Creation, and His people.  I’ve been preparing for my own wedding which despite what most people tell me, is actually quite a stressful endeavor.  Lots to plan, lots to do, and unfortunately, lots to pay for!  It’s good though.  All the challenges are worth what God has planned through it.  It’s that mindset; a considering of God’s plans, His eternality, and the fleeting nature of our time on Earth that prompted today’s writing from Ecclesiastes 3:1-15:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up; 
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;  
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;  
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;  
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.  He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.  I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.  That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been”

I don’t have a great task in explaining the text above.  I don’t have a great burden to exposit a deeper meaning beyond what the text clearly reveals.  My purpose in sharing this text is to lift up our God up rightly, that we should both fear Him, and find joy in Him.  His sovereignty over all things is both fearsome and comforting.  We know that God has always been and always will be.  He has given that knowledge to us in our hearts.  It is what draws us initially to Him, that we know that is a greatness beyond what we can see with our eyes, beyond the time alloted to each of us.  Each of us enters into God’s story, born to parents chosen for us, given an upbringing chosen for us, purposed for work and works laid out for us.  For many, knowing this will illicit questions of why God allows pain, allows loss, but the text is clear – we cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  Deuteronomy 29:29 – “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”  So we worship a God we cannot fully understand, we stand in awe that He is all knowing, all powerful, and all good, even when we cannot see how.  We rest our souls in the goodness of God, because we believe and our hope is found , not with our eyes, but our faith that Love died that we would know and be reconciled to the God who Loves us beyond what we can know. (1 John 4:19, Rom 5:8).  As we look then, towards our God is beyond understanding and who has ordained a time for all things, we should embrace what we do know of Him to pursue our joy in Him as our lives overflow into good works.

My exhortation then is simple, let your heart rest in God.  Dwell on His sovereignty, dwell on His love for you, and consider all that He is for you in Eternity.  He is our treasure, and He is already ours through Christ.  Rest there, and find joy in God.  I’ll leave you with a quote from George Muller, a 19th century pastor who made it his life’s work to care for over 10,000 orphans:

“According to my judgement the most important point to be attended to is this: above all things see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord’s work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself! Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life. This has been my firm and settled condition for the last five and thirty years. For the first four years after my conversion I knew not its vast importance, but now after much experience I specially commend this point to the notice of my younger brethren and sisters in Christ: the secret of all true effectual service is joy in God, having experimental acquaintance and fellowship with God Himself.”
― George Müller

I hope this finds you all well.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

 

Matthew 16:24-27 “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.  For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?  For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”

Proverbs 18:24 – “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

Friends,

I’ve had a burden lately for those who are far from God.  My heart hurts for those who know God, know they are a sinner, are broken over that, but unsure what to do.  Often times, we try to satisfy our soul’s needs and longings in the most expedient way possible, patching them with whatever is readily available, rather than what God has provided.  I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I still fight against that.  One of the most common ways I find myself drifting from God, is by surrounding myself with people who are far from God themselves.  When my close friends are not battling with me to grow closer to God, I have lost the joy of relationships God meant for me to have.

Man was not made to be alone – we see that from the very beginning of creation in Genesis 2:18 – “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”  Certainly God had in mind marriage, the most important of all relationships for someone – but at our core, we were made for relationships – we yearn for good friends and fellowship, to be known, cared for, and loved.  This is because we were made in the image of God – who although One God, exists in three persons in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  These three were created to perfectly know one another, perfectly serve one another, and perfectly love one another.

So relationships are good as they were designed by God, why then does proverbs say “a man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother”  This is because, we want to be accepted without judgment, we want to feel loved, and sadly, we believe that the best way we can do that, is by surrounding ourselves with people who will accept and perhaps even encourage sin in our life.  So we have relationships with people who instead of pushing us closer to God, simply make us feel “comfortable” about the sin in our life.  These can be friendships, romantic relationships, or even marriages.  These types of “companions” that surround a person, may lead a person away from God completely.  The reality is that sin is not without consequence, not just before God, but here, now, in the world, sin leads to brokenness, shame, isolation, depression, and a host of other painful things.  Why would we want to deaden our soul to feel “comfortable” in that, when God has a better plan for our lives?

Like most issues of the heart, the gospel of Jesus is the answer.  Do you believe that Jesus accepts you today, fully, even with all your junk and sin you’re still struggling with?  Most of us have a hard time with that.  Most of us believe we’re letting Jesus down, and He can’t love us like we are – but that’s not the gospel.  The gospel of Jesus says, that “God shows is love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8)  There’s not a “better version” of you, that God will delight in.  Jesus knew your sin – past, present, and future, and paid for it all on the cross.  The Holy Spirit quickened your heart to believe on Jesus for salvation, and “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39).  That is the gospel of Jesus.  That is God’s Truth.  You are fully known (better than you know yourself) by God, and perfectly loved by Him, because “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself” (2 Cor 5:17-18)

God’s plan for our close relationships is to surround us with people who share in God’s Truth.  People who do not care what sin you’ve fallen to, they will press you into the gospel and towards God.  There is no judgment in these friendships, because the judgment fell on Christ.  They will remind you – Jesus paid for all your sin, mourn the sin in your life, but know that you are redeemed – walk like a son or daughter of God, because that is who you are.  They’ll finish by saying, guess what, if you’re in the same position tomorrow, I’m going to say the same thing to you.  They are there to model the companionship that exists within God, they do not leave you when you fall, they love you ahead of their own good, and they want the best for you.  Sadly in the modern church where church discipline is gone, daily fellowship is gone, and there is a portion of body of Christ that is simply there for cultural reasons, it can be difficult to find truly gospel centered friendships.  It’s much easier to find friends and relationships with people who won’t talk with you about God, especially not in a way that would challenge you.  Don’t settle for that.  It’s worth the effort – even if you find one friend who will love you the way God intends His love to be modeled out from the gospel, it’s worth it.

If you’re far from God today, know that God loves you right where you are.  Before you move on, just press God’s word and the gospel truth back into your heart, and settle it – As you believe on Jesus, know that He loves you, He has redeemed you – it’s done.  You’re completely pure, perfect, and righteous.  You have the perfect righteousness of Christ clothing you, that is what God sees today, right now, when He sees and thinks about you.  Part of God’s love for you, is that He’s given you means to grow closer to Him for your joy.  That is primarily through His Word, through prayer, and through gospel-centered relationships with other Christians.  Those friends, will stick closer than a brother, they will be with you, loving and encouraging you every step of the way, because they know you’ve been redeemed already, as they have.  If you don’t have that, pursue it through the Church; reach out to me if I can help in any way.  Life will always bring trials, and sin is present to tempt us away from God every day.  We have an enemy trying to take us down every day “though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”  (Eccl 4:12)

Know you’re loved and prayed for.

Grace and Peace,

Adam