"There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world...
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.' I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.' " - John 1:6-9, 29-31 ESV
It is said that this John could have been the High Priest in Israel at that time. He had the right genetics but the politics of the day had someone else in that office. John was a priest 'outside the camp'. He was calling people to turn and ready themselves for the Messiah that was coming.
One of the jobs of the priesthood was to inspect the sacrifices that came in and approve them. The lambs could not have a spot or a blemish. They couldn't be lame or sickly.
In this passage we see John approving of Jesus' perfect status. If Jesus was to be the 'lamb of God' he needed priestly approval but He wasn't going to get that approval is the priestly system.
You and I are outside the camp but inside God's camp and He wants us to inspect the lamb. If this lamb is the perfect lamb we can also approve of the sacrifice He made. If the cross is applied to our life then we don't have to die there. Jesus already did for us.
Has a sacrifice been found?
John could have been bitter and the system that rejected him and held to degrees of hypocrisy. Perhaps he was but one day he saw the perfect lamb and his whole life came into focus. He thought he knew the reason why he did what he did, baptizing people with water, but it all came into focus when Jesus came into view.
Have you seen Jesus?
Have you inspected His life and His words? He is the perfect lamb. Seeing Him is the key to understanding our own motives. Seeing Him give us insight into God's mind and heart. Seeing Him bring light into our mind. Trusting in the quality of who He Is and what He has done on the cross brings a washing that makes us white as snow.
--
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Friday, April 5, 2019
The Bible Says
What is the difference between 'the Bible says' and what some clever 'guru, professor, philosopher, scientist or clever person giving a TED talk says'? Is there a difference to you or me? What is different?
I must humble myself to receive what the Bible says but in order to even get to that place I must see something different.
"Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, 'Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.' " - Hebrews 10:5-7 ESV
The King James version phrases verse 7 this way...
"Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God." - Hebrews 10:7 KJV
Jesus compares His incarnation (the divine appearing to mankind as a human baby and walking and talking with people) with His entrance into a person's life through the Bible. They are similar. In some ways, Jesus seemed like just another man. But this man healed people and forgave the unforgivable. Being with Him was, and is, like being with the Father in Heaven.
The Bible seems like just another book. You can dissect it and rip pages out of it but if you spend time with it you will see something different... something divine.
It has answers. It has all the answers. It also has a powerful framework that people have and can use to shame, oppress and manipulate people with. Aren't people like the God they worship? It isn't unreasonable to think that.
I see young men and women drift away from the book and it makes me sad for them but I also understand. I was young once (long ago). {smile}
I know that if people are really looking that the God of the Bible will find them and that the words of this book will resonate in a way that no clever intellectual framework can.
Today, like every other day, is a day for humility. The Bible 'speaks' but am I listening? It would be a wise thing to do. The One who Is speaking cares for you and for me. The One who Is speaking is the same One who died on a tree and rose again.
--
I must humble myself to receive what the Bible says but in order to even get to that place I must see something different.
"Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, 'Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.' " - Hebrews 10:5-7 ESV
The King James version phrases verse 7 this way...
"Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God." - Hebrews 10:7 KJV
Jesus compares His incarnation (the divine appearing to mankind as a human baby and walking and talking with people) with His entrance into a person's life through the Bible. They are similar. In some ways, Jesus seemed like just another man. But this man healed people and forgave the unforgivable. Being with Him was, and is, like being with the Father in Heaven.
The Bible seems like just another book. You can dissect it and rip pages out of it but if you spend time with it you will see something different... something divine.
It has answers. It has all the answers. It also has a powerful framework that people have and can use to shame, oppress and manipulate people with. Aren't people like the God they worship? It isn't unreasonable to think that.
I see young men and women drift away from the book and it makes me sad for them but I also understand. I was young once (long ago). {smile}
I know that if people are really looking that the God of the Bible will find them and that the words of this book will resonate in a way that no clever intellectual framework can.
Today, like every other day, is a day for humility. The Bible 'speaks' but am I listening? It would be a wise thing to do. The One who Is speaking cares for you and for me. The One who Is speaking is the same One who died on a tree and rose again.
--
Thursday, April 4, 2019
The Gatherer
"These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." - John 14:25-27 ESV
Who Is this Holy wind who has such access to our minds? He can gather our thought together and arrange them like flowers in a vase.
Fear and disorder are linked, aren't they? Chaos has uncertainty but The Holy Spirit restores islands of order in disorder and we can rest in the bed He has made for us.
Jesus' mind and teachings are a safe place. They are The safe place. If these thoughts are planted they will grow because they are alive. Then the Holy Spirit will use those 'materials' in our mind.
The dark mind has no flowers to gather. There are only thorns and thistles.
God help us by Your Spirit to be sowers of good seed.
--
Who Is this Holy wind who has such access to our minds? He can gather our thought together and arrange them like flowers in a vase.
Fear and disorder are linked, aren't they? Chaos has uncertainty but The Holy Spirit restores islands of order in disorder and we can rest in the bed He has made for us.
Jesus' mind and teachings are a safe place. They are The safe place. If these thoughts are planted they will grow because they are alive. Then the Holy Spirit will use those 'materials' in our mind.
The dark mind has no flowers to gather. There are only thorns and thistles.
God help us by Your Spirit to be sowers of good seed.
--
Silencing That Noise
Something has been rattling in my car lately. It seemed to be coming from the passenger side and tonight as I was driving to Trader Joes I became determined to find it and make it stop. I tugged on the seatbelt.. opened and closed the glove compartment.. opened it again and saw a loose pen.. maybe it was the pen.. I pulled it out and put it on the passenger seat. 'That pen is going bye bye.' I thought... I can't leave it in the sun on the passenger seat... out it goes next chance I get.
No rattle. Mission accomplished but then the rattle started again. I checked the cup dispensers and low and behold it was an empty Starbucks cup that was sitting on some loose change! I stuffed a napkin under the cup and... silence. The rattle didn't return.
I shopped. The breakfast blend got grinded coarsely for my French press. I got in the car to go home and, almost unconsciously, I grabbed that bad bad pen and threw it in the Trader Joes bag that had been overstuffed by some well-meaning long bearded cashier intent on saving the planet.
No. Wait.. that isn't a bad pen. That pen is useful and needed. If I get rid of it I'll have nothing to write with. 'The problem isn't the pen', My head said to my heart.
I blindly 'looked with fingers' in the bag next to me and nearly got a paper cut on my forearm finding and fishing that pen out again. It is now back snuggly wedged between oil change receipts where it belongs.
Things need to be rooted out sometimes. Sure they do but I don't want to cast out the baby with the bathwater. I'm asking God to help me with that. I want to be brave enough to make changes and wise enough to not remove the old landmarks.
--
No rattle. Mission accomplished but then the rattle started again. I checked the cup dispensers and low and behold it was an empty Starbucks cup that was sitting on some loose change! I stuffed a napkin under the cup and... silence. The rattle didn't return.
I shopped. The breakfast blend got grinded coarsely for my French press. I got in the car to go home and, almost unconsciously, I grabbed that bad bad pen and threw it in the Trader Joes bag that had been overstuffed by some well-meaning long bearded cashier intent on saving the planet.
No. Wait.. that isn't a bad pen. That pen is useful and needed. If I get rid of it I'll have nothing to write with. 'The problem isn't the pen', My head said to my heart.
I blindly 'looked with fingers' in the bag next to me and nearly got a paper cut on my forearm finding and fishing that pen out again. It is now back snuggly wedged between oil change receipts where it belongs.
Things need to be rooted out sometimes. Sure they do but I don't want to cast out the baby with the bathwater. I'm asking God to help me with that. I want to be brave enough to make changes and wise enough to not remove the old landmarks.
--
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Participation
"If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, How will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?" Jeremiah 12:5 NASB
If I don't know what I can handle how can I know what my 'horse', or vehicle, can handle?
The land of peace has few obstacles but the thicket has many obstacles that require preparation, gear and planning to pass.
Some may say, 'I just won't compete with horses and Jordan is too hard for me.' Nonsense talk! Who has whispered that garbage in your ear?
Don't you want to feel the wind in your face? Don't you want to see the faithfulness of God in the moment to bless a prepared life?
Life is for living not just existing.
If I don't know what I can handle how can I know what my 'horse', or vehicle, can handle?
The land of peace has few obstacles but the thicket has many obstacles that require preparation, gear and planning to pass.
Some may say, 'I just won't compete with horses and Jordan is too hard for me.' Nonsense talk! Who has whispered that garbage in your ear?
Don't you want to feel the wind in your face? Don't you want to see the faithfulness of God in the moment to bless a prepared life?
Life is for living not just existing.
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Love And Longing
Sitting here contrasting different kinds of love. Loving something, or someone, beautiful (in demand) versus loving the ugly unwanted thing. Love that is 'arranged' versus romantic (chosen). Selfish love and love based on principle.
Love versus lust. Hate and cold indifference.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 ESV
Love is what people want and fear most.
I struggle like everyone does and everyone does struggle. This is a particularly difficult time of struggle in some ways. I wrestle with God because by sight things look a certain way but then I ponder His love... specifically the love manifested by and through Jesus and I become grounded again.
I see men trying to love women who have moved on. I see people raising children without a partner bearing life's burdens. I see sick friends and even noble people who died deaths that seemed cruel and anonymous and I struggle but love, real love, grounds me and eases my mind.
God taught me and teaches me daily how to love. I learn what to drop and what to cling to as I follow Him and the lamp of His word lights my path.
--
Love versus lust. Hate and cold indifference.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 ESV
Love is what people want and fear most.
I struggle like everyone does and everyone does struggle. This is a particularly difficult time of struggle in some ways. I wrestle with God because by sight things look a certain way but then I ponder His love... specifically the love manifested by and through Jesus and I become grounded again.
I see men trying to love women who have moved on. I see people raising children without a partner bearing life's burdens. I see sick friends and even noble people who died deaths that seemed cruel and anonymous and I struggle but love, real love, grounds me and eases my mind.
God taught me and teaches me daily how to love. I learn what to drop and what to cling to as I follow Him and the lamp of His word lights my path.
--
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Repair Or Start Over?
"The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 'Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.' So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the LORD came to me:" - Jeremiah 18:1-5 ESV
This is a fundamental truth about mankind and fallen systems. Jeremiah needed to see this before he could hear and understand Israel's provision to communicate that provision to them.
Are people fundamentally good and they just need training and occasional mending and healing or are they broken beyond repair and they need a rebirth?
I read the Bible and see the cross as 'an engine of transformation' because it evaporates my humanity and then I am condensed again in the resurrection. That process allows for purity and the cyclical removal of impurities.
I see philosophies and theologies that teach that man is good and doesn't need to be remade and they look good on paper but do they work in practice? No. Not for the vast majority of humanity and the Christian God can't fellowship with anything but absolute uncompromised holiness and purity.
Don't fall for the, 'Wash, rinse and repeat.' advice given by well meaning but false teachers. It isn't spiritual. They aren't hearing from God. They are warmed by their own faulty fleeting fire of a natural idea.
God remakes men.
"Jesus answered him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.' " - John 3:3 ESV
Rebirth solves a fundamental issue.
"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! - assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." - Ephesians 4:17-32 ESV
This isn't a 'look at examples of good people and be like them' theology. This is the exchanged life based on a rebirth.
"And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:" - Colossians 3:10 KJV
A new person can have a healthy self-image in honesty. The old man is slowly being poisoned by things that can only be purged by the cross.
I look to God and declare by faith that practical newness can happen today. I ask Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit and let the evaporation of the cross work on me. Jesus was raised on the third day and you and I are raised with Him. His identity is intertwined with our view of ourselves and we can hear what God's wants to communicate because we agree with Him about a fundamental truth about the nature of our relationship with Him.
--
This is a fundamental truth about mankind and fallen systems. Jeremiah needed to see this before he could hear and understand Israel's provision to communicate that provision to them.
Are people fundamentally good and they just need training and occasional mending and healing or are they broken beyond repair and they need a rebirth?
I read the Bible and see the cross as 'an engine of transformation' because it evaporates my humanity and then I am condensed again in the resurrection. That process allows for purity and the cyclical removal of impurities.
I see philosophies and theologies that teach that man is good and doesn't need to be remade and they look good on paper but do they work in practice? No. Not for the vast majority of humanity and the Christian God can't fellowship with anything but absolute uncompromised holiness and purity.
Don't fall for the, 'Wash, rinse and repeat.' advice given by well meaning but false teachers. It isn't spiritual. They aren't hearing from God. They are warmed by their own faulty fleeting fire of a natural idea.
God remakes men.
"Jesus answered him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.' " - John 3:3 ESV
Rebirth solves a fundamental issue.
"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! - assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." - Ephesians 4:17-32 ESV
This isn't a 'look at examples of good people and be like them' theology. This is the exchanged life based on a rebirth.
"And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:" - Colossians 3:10 KJV
A new person can have a healthy self-image in honesty. The old man is slowly being poisoned by things that can only be purged by the cross.
I look to God and declare by faith that practical newness can happen today. I ask Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit and let the evaporation of the cross work on me. Jesus was raised on the third day and you and I are raised with Him. His identity is intertwined with our view of ourselves and we can hear what God's wants to communicate because we agree with Him about a fundamental truth about the nature of our relationship with Him.
--
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