What We Must Learn Cannot Be Taught

In my last post, I talked about the need to teach, not just model a faith in Christ. Today I want to follow up that although we need to evangelize and disciple people; there are some things that just cannot be taught, they have to be learned. And that learning usually comes through experience.

You cannot argue someone into heaven. I do not know who said that, I wish I did. It is so true. While we are called to share our faith, it is the drawing of the Holy Spirit that brings someone to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. We bring Christ to people, we do not bring people to Christ. God does the hard part, He just asks us to share His Son with others as Jesus has been shared with us.

Everyone needs to experience the saving power of faith in Christ alone for themselves. It must be learned by each person, but it cannot be taught by any of us.

Take the burden off yourself by presenting Christ to someone who does not have that saving faith. Know that they will learn it by experiencing it for themselves through the agency of the Holy Spirit.

And pray daily that people will learn from you what you cannot teach them.


Technorati Tags: Evangelizing, discipling, Jesus, Lord, Holy Spirit, salvation

I Have Been Slimed

"I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear And will trust in the LORD."
Psalm 40:1-3 (New American Standard Bible)

As I think of how I came to Christ in my late 40's, I think of what a slimy pit of miry clay He pulled me out of. As I think of the struggle with my sinful nature, I think of that same slimy mire. The beauty of it now is that I know He will pull me out. Before I came to Him, I did not even know what I was wallowing around in. As hard as I try to stay out, I am sure I will plop in from time to time, but have the assurance of knowing a rope will drag me out if I sing that new song He has put on my lips.

A personal relationship with Jesus as Savior means to grasp what it is to be rescued from self. I know how miserable the future would be without Him now, and I can wait patiently (well, at least I can be patient when I remember to turn to Him in prayer and praise) for the deliverance He has promised.

I have the knowledge, acceptance and trust of a saving faith in Christ Jesus. I have been washed clean, and continued to get washed as I struggle though a fallen world coping with a sinful flesh.

I was slimed, about 47 years worth as a matter of fact. Only Christ could wash that off and keep me that way.

Technorati Tags: Jesus, Lord, God, flesh, sin, salvation

How Are You Living Your Life

Dr. Ken Boa, in his Handbook To Spiritual Growth, compares our lives here on earth to eternity in the following way. A man is planning on moving from Dallas to Atlanta to live the remaining 50 years of his life. He plans every detail of the two day drive; where he will eat, sleep, stop for gas. But he has no clue as to what he will do for the remaining 50 years. Sounds ridiculous, but the point that life here on earth and eternal life are the same way. We plan the details of a short life here, trying to control it all (there is that control thing again) yet let the eternal consequences slide, pushed back in our minds because we do not want to think of death in this life, even if it means life eternal in the next. But at that point, the consequences of our choice are irrevocable, so make the right one now. Accept Jesus as the Savior of your life, the only way to your eternal salvation.

We are all going to live forever in eternity. That is not the question.

The question is where.

Technorati Tags: Ken Boa, Handbook To Spiritual Growth, Jesus, Lord, God, salvation, eternity

Tossed

Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
Micah 7:18-19 (NIV)

I love this imagery. The Lord drowning our old sinful nature. Treading it underfoot, tossing it under the waves. Getting thrown into the depths of the sea. As I think about how I cannot get rid of all that is in my nature that is abhorrent to the Lord, how glad I am that He will make it so.

Just a short note today, as I get ready to go worship the Lord.

And to thank Him that He threw my old self overboard.

It's So Easy

The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: April 6 Devotional

The ease to which our salvation can come to us is often the hardest thing to grasp. We borne nothing at the Cross and gained everything. It may be hard in our pride to accept the fact that we are insignificant in our own salvation, the hard work was done without us even being a part of it. How much more a salve to pride to think we accomplished it through great struggle and significant accomplishment on our part. Our salvation is not accomplished through our great struggle but despite our great sin.

That we grasp what is so freely offered, and so painfully won to hand over to us in an incredible ease. Grace pours out of the heart of God,, the heart that absorbed the pain of our sin and freed us from it.

The collision occurred, but we get to walk away from that crash, unscathed and saved. We get to come off of His mountain because He climbed it for us.




Technorati Tags: Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, God, Jesus, Lord, salvation, sin, grace

No Box Big Enough

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!
1 Kings 8:27 (NASB)

Solomon built a temple, and spoke these words upon completion. Humanity may try to erect a temple, a structure, even a concept that can contain God. We cannot. He is within all creation, yet He is outside it, for He created it. We cannot put God in a box, but we can take him out of a book, the Bible. We can bring Him into our minds, hearts, thoughts, deeds and actions. Because He permits us to do that through His love, His grace, His mercy.

We can open a book, open a door and enter into a place He has chosen to reside, although that place can never contain Him. I take great comfort from the fact that God is bigger than anything I can possibly conceive, that He is sovereign over all. I especially like thinking about it as the day we worship the resurrection of Jesus is right before us.

Open a door, open your mind. Climb out of the box of your own sin, face the fact that only through Jesus can you reach your eternal salvation. Stop trying to package God. The door to Him is open, but your box will not fit through it.



Technorati Tags: God, Jesus, salvation, creation, Easter, resurrection

What Is Easy, What Is Hard

There is nothing easier than getting saved, because it is solely God’s sovereign work— "Look to Me, and be saved . . ." ( Isaiah 45:22 ). Our Lord never requires the same conditions for discipleship that he requires for salvation.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: February 2 Devotional

Read this yesterday and it hit me hard. There really is nothing easier than salvation because God does all the work. There is nothing harder than discipleship because following hard after Jesus, living like Christ, cuts against our sinful and selfish nature.

What is His alone is easier for He is sovereign. What is ours to do is hard for we are sinners. Yet the first brings great joy to any who He calls in for it is eternal salvation that we face. The second pleases God because being like His Son is the highest goal we face and it is what He wants for us more than anything else.

You can have the easy through faith, you can get closer to the hard through faithful obedience. You cannot lose the first, but you will never achieve the second until He brings you home.

Technorati Tags: God, Jesus, faith, obedience, joy, salvation, discipleship

Total Ignorance is Euphoria

A few days ago I visited a blog I follow and comment on from time to time, Human 3rror. If you go there you will see my comment on this techie type update John posted, as he released it for public viewing (not even going to comment on him doing that to me, since he corrected that situation. I know he did, I went back and checked the post again).

My point was I do not know what he is talking about or what the commenters are talking about. I may have made the most intelligent or the dumbest comment, the point is I know enough that I do not know enough to know the answer to that one. Huh?

I do not get hung up on stuff like this anymore, not at my age. I know lots of things, and more importantly, I know I do not know lots of things. I am OK with that. More important, I know it is only going to get worse as I get older, that ratio of know to not know. And not even having a clue is a virulently growing category as well.

The world moves faster than me, the only thing I can keep up with is my faith in Jesus as the only way to my salvation. That moves at a pace I can keep up with and actually learn more about. The know to not know ratio improves daily. The clueless quotient drops. But I never reach the destination, although I never stop trying. That's biblical.

So the world goes on, the sun wheels across the sky, the generations march forward relentlessly. I fall farther behind the world, but all I am trying to do is keep up with God. I will let the rest gradually fall by the wayside.

If ignorance is bliss, total ignorance is euphoria. At least with worldly knowledge. Might be harder to bear the future here if it is not.


Technorati Tags: Bliss, euphoria, ignorance, Jesus, God, salvation

Chosen

I have been working through the study Experiencing God my church is doing. I liked the lesson of yesterday, a message that I have been reflecting on for a bit:

The LORD appeared to him from afar, saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.
Jeremiah 31:3 (NASB)

I led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love, And I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws; And I bent down and fed them.
Hosea 11:4 (NASB)

There is incredible comfort knowing we are drawn to God, by the Father, that are relationship with Jesus Christ is a result of a nurturing Father bringing sinners to His loving Son. It took me until my late 40's to come to faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and I am so thankful that the Father drew me in over the years, bending down to feed his child, hungry after years in the spiritual desert of unbelief. Drawing, ever drawing, He drew me in. Wow. I have been chosen, and that is good, for I could never choose for myself, nor earn what was given freely.

And as I thought about this, some lyrics from a song from a ways ago came to mind:

...Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me What a long, strange trip it's been...
From Truckin' by The Grateful Dead

Not entirely true for me. There is the joy of knowing that His lights shines, and will always shine,
on me. And it blinds me, unless I am looking directly at the core of that light, seeking His face,
seeking it continually. What a wonderful trip it will be, for the strangeness is over and will in
time be forgotten as He wipes away every tear in His time.

Salvation

Friday afternoon I went to see a movie with the term salvation in the title. I enjoyed the movie, but it was not salvation in the terms I usually think of these days. Ultimately, it was about humanity saving itself from the actions of humanity (although the bad guys were the machines, you have to remember where they came from).

We cannot save ourselves or save each other, we cannot save a thing in this world.

⁷But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
2 Peter 3:7 (NASB)

We can save nothing for any length of time that would be meaningful in divine terms. For only eternity has any real meaning for purposes of salvation.

True salvation comes from one place only, faith in Jesus Christ.

I need to maintain an eternal mindset when I think about where I am going to wind up. There is salvation and it is from the one man, Jesus Christ.

Rise To The Occasion

Direct the total energy of your powers so that you may achieve everything your election as a child of God provides; rise every time to whatever occasion may come your way...You did not do anything to achieve your salvation, but you must do something to exhibit it...Are your speech, your thinking, and your emotions evidence that you are working it "out"? If you are still the same miserable, grouchy person, set on having your own way, then it is a lie to say that God has saved and sanctified you...God will never shield you from the requirements of being His son or daughter...Rise to the occasion—do what the trial demands of you. It does not matter how much it hurts as long as it gives God the opportunity to manifest the life of Jesus in your body...May God not find complaints in us anymore, but spiritual vitality—a readiness to face anything He brings our way. The only proper goal of life is that we manifest the Son of God; and when this occurs, all of our dictating of our demands to God disappears.

Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 15 Devotional

Instead of rising to the occasion, this could have easily been called stop complaining.
God calls us as His sons and daughters, and then we have a responsibility to be obedient before the Father, just as Jesus was.
We need to do so with more speed and willingness and less procrastination and complaining, just as Jesus did.
God is willing to treat us as He does His Son, He just asks that we try to act a little more like Him. Is that too much to ask given what He is willing to bestow on us, what He was willing to suffer for us.
Jesus rose to the occasion of our salvation, can we rise to the occasion of grateful obedience?

Look To Me

I liked this portion of the My Utmost For His Highest devotional today. It is a simple yet profound statement:

Wake yourself up and look to God. Build your hope on Him. No matter how
many things seem to be pressing in on you, be determined to push them
aside and look to Him. "Look to Me . . . ." Salvation is yours the moment you look.

We really have to do very little, it is less than taking a step. more like turning your neck. You don't even have to get out of your favorite chair. How great is it that we have a God that will do all the work. We really do get a free ride here.

Look to Him.

Look to Him,trust and believe in Jesus.