Skip to main content

Are you a 'last chapter' kind of Christian?

This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father.  (Romans 4:16)

If you are anything like me, there are going to be times when we feel like nothing good is coming out of our actions. WE try hard - but WE don't see much good fruit from all our trying. If you have not heard this before, grace is not based on what WE do, but on what GOD does in us. Try as we might - we cannot fix the problem of sin in our lives. Try as we might - we cannot "figure out" everything that goes wrong or doesn't measure up to our expectations. We need a power stronger than ours, a wisdom better than our own, and a perspective higher than ours. Heritage in the natural sense does not guarantee "right-standing" with God, or some guarantee of never facing the harder stuff in life. The Jewish believers Paul is writing to in our passage had the idea their heritage of being of their "Father Abraham" made them better than the newer believers from the Gentile community who were joining the church. Is it possible we might have encountered this in our own communities at one time or another? One group saying to the other group, "We are better because...."  While it happens far too often, it is silliness - pure and simple. No one gets "better treatment" from God just because they are of a particular "denomination" or "heritage"! God employs grace EQUALLY upon all who seek it!

God makes all kinds of promises. It is not what we do, but what HE does, which makes the fulfillment of those promises possible. For example, the promise to never leave us or forsake us is based on HIS faithfulness, not ours! Isn't that good news? Knowing he is in control of the "never leaving" and "always keeping" part of our lives is a whole lot of comfort to this gal who struggles with consistency in her life! Our part is in the trusting. First, we trust God. Then we trust what it is he does and how he does it - his ways. How do we discover his "ways"? In scripture! We have been given the "play-book" of sorts, so we can get to know how he structures the best defense and offense in our lives! Trust is based on obedience, is it not? When we trust someone, we do what they instruct. Maybe God asks us to do things we think might actually "hurt", but in doing them, we find he "catches" us every time, keeping us from "hurting ourselves"! We learn obedience is built on trust and trust is built in obedience. Equating the two is often the best lesson we can learn!

We have to embrace God, then what he is doing. We often want to go about this backward - embracing what God is doing without fully embracing him. Let me tell you, I would not jump out of an airplane alone if I knew I could do it a couple of times in tandem with another experienced jumper! I would choose the closeness of an experienced skydiver simply because I would feel "held close". Maybe there is a lesson there for us as it applies to obedience. God asks us to embrace him - giving ALL to him in this embrace. In so doing, he is holding us close enough to take whatever "leap" he wants us to take - all while we are held in his arms. We do our best "leaping" when we are in tandem with God - not by just jumping out on our own! We need to guard against "reading the story backward". Ever flip to the last chapter of a book to find out how it ends? If you have, you might just know the end of the book, but you don't know what led up to the ending! God remind us of the importance of "precepts". A precept is a "direction" given as a means of action. We build upon this precept with another until we get the "context" of actions which lead up to the "right stuff" in our lives. We cannot just skip from the beginning to the end without all the "precepts" in place. If we do, we might "feel like" we got to the end unscathed and ahead of planned arrival, but we realize we still have all our issues in tow! Sometimes we need to take time to drop a few of these issues along the way - by understanding a new precept or two and acting on them. We call this obedience! Just sayin!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,