Monday, October 14, 2013

WHO IS FAMILY, REALLY?

I was reading Mark 3:31-35 this morning.  Jesus was told that His mother and brothers were outside and wanted to see Him.  He looked at the crowd sitting around Him and asked the question, "Who are My mother and brothers?"  Then He answered His own question.  He said, "Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."

Was He rejecting His mother, His family?  I think Jesus was making a point that the people who are submitted to God have a stronger bond to Him because it is a spiritual bond.  Sure Jesus' mother and brother share DNA and makes them related in some ways, but it's about so much more than that.

We all go back to one ancestor.  Even Eve came from Adam.  Our bodies are made up of DNA, cells, blood, muscles, bones, etc., chemistry that reproduces over and over again, giving us a body, but that isn't all there is to us.  We have a spirit and that spirit gives our body it's personality, thoughts, emotions, it remembers and feels.  Without a spirit we are an empty shell.

I was with my mother when she died.  At the instant she exhaled her last breath, her spirit was gone.  She no longer looked like my mom.  It looked to me like an empty suit of clothes laying on the bed where she once was.  She departed from that room.  I knew that in theory, but now I experienced a body void of what made it come to life.

A good example is a contractor building a new house.  He builds it and it stands empty amid a row of other new houses, all unoccupied.  Not until a family moves in does it become a home.  They bring their furniture, pictures, their personality to the house.  Now it becomes a home.  There are activities happening in the house, new people are invited in, memories are being made.  It becomes their home.  And when they are away they say they are going back home, not to a house, because who lives there gives it its meaning and it is something different than just a house.

When our spirit is born again, our spirit uniting with Jesus', we are a new person.  It is like an egg and a sperm coming together at fertilization.  A new person is born.  That makes us family with others who share the same Father.  Now we share a family history.  That bond is stronger than the DNA we share with other mortals.

I am sure Jesus loved His earthly family, but He came to call us to a more secure family.  He was teaching that to His disciples.  Did they understand?  Do you?

Friday, October 11, 2013

WHO IS FORGIVEN

I was on my way to stay with my grandson today and as I was driving I was remembering the sins of my past.  It's like I have no connection with the young woman I used to be, except to use what I know to help someone else.  That's the benefit of being a repentant sinner.

 When I got to my daughter's house it was quiet, my grandson was still asleep.  I kept thinking of who I used to be.  Mulling over the past can overwhelm you sometimes. I began to read what was next on my reading plan in my Bible, Mark 3:28-30, that all sins are forgiven.  Jesus made sure I got the message today.  He read the question in my mind.  He most likely knew before time that on this day that grown up little girl from Pittsburgh would be reading these words and that they would sustain her.  I praised, "You are unfathomable Lord!"  And I asked, "Expand my mind, my imagination to begin to rightly explore the never-ending mystery of You Jesus."

I sing praises to The Lord at times, and I began to sing Blessed Assurance.  And the words of the song hit me.  I am born of the Spirit and washed in Jesus' blood.  How awesome is that?  Just because I know Jesus, I am clean.  What's even more is that I get eternal life thrown in.  What a mind blowing deal!  Then I asked, "Why did you choose me Jesus?  And why don't more people see what I just did?"

But verse 29 says that the person who blasphemes the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness.  What does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Spirit?  Is it the unbelief that comes because they don't understand how Jesus gets on the inside of people, therefore they don't believe it?  Is it that people believe Jesus existed, and even that He is God, but He died and now the world is on auto-pilot?  Maybe they just can't believe that Jesus can still be on this earth in the souls of mankind.  They have trouble with the supernatural aspect in what they cannot see.

I pray, "Open their eyes Lord.  Blow their minds with a supernatural display of who You are that they can't explain away.  Leave them speechless.  Overwhelm this country one person at a time."

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Satan, People and Sin



From John Piper's book "Life as a Vapor:
O Lord, Your ways are not our ways, and Your thoughts are not our thoughts.  Yours are unsearchable and often baffling to our finite minds.  You have chosen to give Satan freedom to do great damage, when it would be no injustice to him to destroy him now.  We bow before Your wisdom.  We embrace with Jesus the cross that saves our souls and sends us into battle with faith in the superior beauty and worth of Christ.  Go withus.  Help us.

Why did God permit the Fall?  How could sin spread over the world that God made good?  Why did God just put a "Do Not Enter" sign over an open door to keep Satan from disrupting His world?  Why not just close the door?

What is your answer?

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Awaken the Church

T.M. Moore, Dean of Chuck Colson's Centurions Program says:
"In our day again the Gospel of the Kingdom has been substituted for by an inadequate and false gospel, a gospel of personal peace and wellbeing.  This false gospel loads believers with false assurances about their eternal state even as it distracts them from the pursuit of holiness, minimizes the life of discipline and obedience, fosters an idolatry of material success, redefines the go/tell mission of the Church, and leaves the larger issues of culture and society in the hands of the children of the kingdom of darkness."

"The Gospel of the Kingdom has become captive to mere personal interest, felt needs, aspirations of prosperity, postmodern relativism, and social and political ambitions.  Certainly there are aspects of most of these in the Gospel of the Kingdom; however, the Gospel of the Kingdom is much broader, much deeper, much more integrated, and much more sweeping in its implications and power than any or all of its present-day substitutes.  What we need today is a movement to restore the gospel of the Kingdom - Christianity as a worldview - to the churches and the publice square.  This will not happen without the deliberate, coordinated effort of those who share a burden for such a broad and deep renewal."