What In The World Was I Thinking?

In my household as a child using the word “stupid” was almost as bad as using a four letter curse word. So, excuse me mom for this next sentence (J). During my lifetime, I’ve done some stupid things! That’s right, things that when I look back on them I have to say, “What in the world was I thinking?” During that time I had to be bailed out more than once by my parents and others who had pity on me.

Being bailed out today almost seems like a cultural expectation. Many today who have overextended themselves on their mortgages, lived far above their means and others who have mismanaged and in some cases mis-handled businesses, money and property of others are being bailed out of their situations with no strings attached. We’ve almost become a people where we feel entitled to a “bailout” every time we mess up.

This mindset is scary by itself, but becomes more than frightening and dangerous when it leaks into our view of how God should or does treat us.

Maybe you’ve been there. Maybe you are there now, where God’s grace and mercy has become your heavenly “stimulus package”. Here’s the difference though: When God forgives, shows mercy and extends grace, His heart’s desire is that a heart change will occur and that His kindness will lead to repentance, (turning around and never planning to return). (Romans 2:4) What God has done for you and me is far greater than the AIG or Lehman Brothers bailouts. God did more than change the numbers on our financial reports and stock ledgers; He has changed our eternal destiny and our earthly existence by the power of the cross and through the power of His Spirit.

Let’s take stock of what our response should be to His goodness. Look at what your debts were before and after His grace and mercy took over. When we truly begin to understand the depth of His payment how can we not worship Him with our everythingness.

Make it your point today to worship Him in spirit and truth with a heart filled with thanksgiving for rescuing you from the “mire” and placing you in the “choir”. He is so good. Praise Him for that today!

Journey Through Suffering

I just had an amazing visit from a friend from college. When she walked into my office today we realized that it had been 24 years since we’d seen each other. As with all true friendships, we just picked up where we left off. It was a wonderful couple of hours of catching up and comparing notes on our spouses and children, work, ministry.

Out of all the things that we talked about it was our journey through suffering that sticks out the most. I had the opportunity to share with her all that God had brought me and my family through over the time since we’d seen each other and she did the same. As she shared her story I was struck with the consistency of her focus that was a common thread in every description of where God had taken her. After telling me about her miscarriages and her husband’s job loss and her mother’s illnesses she took me down the road of her Hodgkin's lymphoma. It has been a very difficult road and life is now different in many ways, but her focus was not on her difficulties, but on what God has done, in through and for her in the midst of a very difficult time for her and her family.

As I listened to her talk and watched her countenance I saw a focus in her eyes that was set on the “God of her days”! Although she had journeyed through many dark days, she still gave praise to God. Many questions were and are still unanswered, but her focus was confirmed when she turned to my bookshelf and pointed out a plaque that I have with the lyrics to the hymn “It is well with my soul” etched on it. She said, “As I’ve talked with my husband about the uncertainty of my future, I told him that whatever happens that that song, my favorite song, must be a part of my funeral, whenever that may be.” Her treasure was not in her health, or in the security of comfortable days. Rather her hope and her treasure remains in the fact that God is good, Sovereign and right in the midst of her trials by her side.

As we go through this next week, let’s be proactive and see each day in the same way. Because if our treasure lies in the power and person and favor of our mighty God our hearts will be in the same place as we face the dark and difficult days that will come into each of our lives.

“Living for Jesus through earth's little while
My dearest treasure the light of His smile...”
Thomas Obediah Chisholm

My Destiny

It’s amazing how our circumstances tend to dictate in our minds eye who we are. A loss of a job, the demise of a relationship, a personal failure, someone’s opinion of you can often be where you get your identity from. Someone has said, “your self image is not made up of what you think about yourself, it’s made up of what you think other’s think about you!” How true that so often is!
Several years ago and as a matter of fact, just recently, I was reminded that my focus at the end of my day should not be consumed with what others think about me, but that I should be consumed with what God thinks of me. As a loving Father and benevolent Creator, God has stated in His Word what He thinks of each of His children. I’ve not seen it expressed better than in one of my favorite songs by Dennis Jernigan. May your heart be encouraged as you see yourself through God’s eyes.

My Destiny
All I was I lay aside, now dead to sin, to God alive, born again
Into a new identity! Once asleep to God in sin, now wakened
By the blood and cleansed, born again to be who He called
Me to be! All I have I lay aside, run the race to gain the prize
For the sake of knowing Jesus Christ in me! I cannot yet fully see
All I’m truly called to be. But knowing Christ reveals my hope and destiny!

He calls me child! He calls me to His side eternally!
He calls what once was lost now found! Once bound to sin
Now free! He calls me holy, calls me righteous, by the
Blood redeemed. He calls me over comer, crowned with victory,
This is my destiny!

What once bound me is no more, what was stolen is restored
By the resurrection power of my King.

What was old has been made new,

lies and doubts replaced by truth.

What was silent now resounds, “I am redeemed!”
He calls me servant, calls me warrior, calls me royalty.

He calls me resurrected one, He calls me His redeemed.

He calls me higher, calls me far beyond my wildest dream.

He calls my heart to come and be all He can see, this is my destiny.
He calls me “Chosen, new creation, Trophy of His grace.”
He gives me strength to fight the fight and run to win the race!

He tells me He delights in me while singing over me, accepting me as

His beloved bride to be, this is my destiny.

Amen! Let that truth influence your worship this week! Pastor MJ

Far From The Peaceful Shore,

“I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore,
very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more.
But the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry,
from the waters lifted me, now safe am I.” (James Rowe)

Grace has been defined as “receiving what we don’t deserve.” Mercy has been defined as “not receiving what we do deserve.” I hear children all of the time saying, “That’s not fair!” Many times, when life hands us a bad twist we say the same thing, “God, that’s just not fair!” As I’ve told my children many times, fair would be an eternity without God, and us paying the price for our own sin. That would be impossible, but it would be fair. Anything outside of that is God’s mercy.

We live in a world today that needs to see mercy in living color. People who have blown it sexually, financially, personally, in their marriages, in their jobs, etc., need to be shown mercy. The world around us is much like the man who was beaten and robbed by the thieves in the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. People need the Lord’s mercy. Many have been beaten and broken by the effects of sin, theirs and others. They are sinking deep in their sins, however, many times we walk right by them on the ‘other side’ either by saying that they have made their bed so they must sleep in it, or we just ignore them and pretend that they don’t exist.

Maybe you are a person who feels, toward the ‘wounded’, “Oh, just pull yourself up by the boot straps and move on!” Well, my friend, without Christ and without His divine help and guidance and without the love and power of His Spirit through His people, the world’s ‘boot straps’ are paper thin to non-existent! They are helpless and need us to show God’s love, grace and mercy towards them. The forgiven are to show mercy like we’ve been shown mercy. Let’s never forget the ungrateful servant in Matthew 18:23-35.

Samaritans knew what it was like to be an outcast and to feel ‘thrown-away’. Do we remember what it was like to be lost and without Jesus? As we recall where we were before Christ in our lives we should be drawn to be merciful as Christ was and is to us.
Jesus, the “Good Samaritan” saw us on the road, but”

“Beautiful, that’s how mercy saw me. Though I was broken and so lost,
mercy looked past all my faults; the justice of God saw all I had done,
mercy saw me through the Son. Not was I was, but what I could be,
that’s how mercy saw me. ) Geron Davis

May we today, this week and in the days to come have the same eyes~

How many of us live with a heavenly perspective on life? By heavenly perspective, I mean seeing life through the lens of eternity. I remember as a young boy, I prayed and talked with my family and friends constantly, about my hope that the rapture would not come before I got married and had the opportunity to experience being married and all that marriage had to offer like being a dad. I remember hearing messages and religious leaders, especially in the late seventies talk about how imminent the return of Christ was, even setting dates. I remember praying desperately and asking God to “wait” until I got married. Well, I can’t say that the fact that I’m married and am a dad 4 times over (one is in heaven) is a direct answer to my prayers, but it has happened and I’m glad that God has blessed me in this way.

However, as I’ve grown in the Lord and come to understand His word better I now see things a bit differently. Not that I would change my situation at all, but as I see and understand it now, if the Lord had come back prior to 1991 when Rebecca and I got married, I would have not only not missed being married, but in heaven I would not even give it a second thought, as being in the presence of God would be my delight, my focus, and my pleasure. How different would our lives be if we walked day in and day out viewing everything through eternal lenses?

We face difficulties, pain and suffering and vast uncertainties each and every day. Left to dwell on what life brings us along, we travel a road of hopelessness and fear. But when we allow every aspect of our daily circumstances to be filtered through the truth of God’s Word, we are able to act and react in a way that is not only pleasing to the Lord, but that allows us to walk in freedom from fear and anxiety. The old hymn puts it this way,

“When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word, what a glory he sheds on our way! While we do His good will, he abides with us still, and with all who will trust and obey. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” John H. Sammis

My friend, no matter what today will bring, ask Father God to help you to see your situation through His eyes and whether it’s sickness, debt, relational problems or even death may His Word give you hope for not only a new day, but a better day “tomorrow”!

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”—John 14:1-3