How interesting it is that the wise men brought Jesus as birthday presents frankincense and myrrh. Those were burial oils and spices. It would be like bringing a baby present of embalming chemicals such as formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and phenol. Gross! But think this through. The birth of Jesus was for one sole purpose, his death. He came to die. These gifts were not only appropriate but prophetic! Incredible!
Matthew 2:11
I don’t know about you, but when I am hungry look out. I’m moody and impatient. It would be the absolute WORST time for me to try to withstand any temptation let alone ALL forms of temptation. To say Jesus was hungry in Matthew 4: 2 would be an understatement. He had not eaten anything for 40 days and 40 nights and THEN he was tempted by Satan himself. Yikes! Let’s remember Matthew 4 when we get tempted. We are lightweights in comparison.
Matthew 4:2
Immanuel, God with us. Think about that for a second. God with US! That tiny helpless baby was God in the flesh. Fully God. Fully man. Amazing. He left everything that was lovely, pure, right, holy, true, and perfect; he left EVERYTHING to come to our broken fallen earth to be amongst broken fallen man. He came to everything that was detestable, impure, wrong, unholy, false, and imperfect to make things right again. What a blessing and honor it is to call Jesus our perfect holy God!
Matthew 1:23
Read James 1:26. “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.” Oh how I thought I was religious! I had someone very close to me say on Christmas Eve that it is BS (her words were said in full) that I was not a Christian when I was in High School. I was super “religious” in the way James uses the term. Back when the Book of James was written the word “religion” was understood to mean a persons outward display of ceremonial worship. I was even respected by this person because I was not too over the top. My “religion” was politically and socially acceptable and palatable and because of that it was desirable. It was what is called “easy believism.” It was not hot. It was not cold. It was right in the middle. That perfect (disgusting) lukewarm “Christianity.”
I believe there is going to be a great shift soon and it is already happening around the world. People are going to start becoming more black and white. More hot and more cold. There will be people who literally fall away from their “faith” and those that realize their faith was no faith at all and they will repent and turn FULLY to Christ. Think about James 1:26. “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.” What do we see happening in most Christian circles today? Gossip. TONS of gossip. All in the name of prayer, or supporting one another. The church’s tongue is not bridled. There is rampant deception going on right in our very own churches! Pastors are watering down their sermons and their theology so much that they have no problem advocating a One Faith Religion.
Take note my friend, just because people claim to be a follower of Jesus does not mean we are “on the same team.” This is not my theology. Read the entire Bible and it will scream at you. Many people who claim to be faith based believers in Jesus Christ will not be going to Heaven. READ THE ENTIRE BIBLE! That is where most people fall short. They never have actually read the entire Bible. Cover to cover. Multiple times. The reason it is called the Living Word is because it brings life to those who read it. It brings eternal life. As my pastor, Mike Fabarez likes to say “The best way to guard against heresy is to read the Bible thoroughly and often.”
This world is so infectious! It is like when your child wants something from you, they are relentless. To ignore them is to be a superwoman. There is no balance in this world as so many people think there is. There is no way to COEXIST as the bumper sticker says with all the religious symbols. It is clear in the Bible that if you are a lover of the world you cannot have the love of God. (1 John 2:15) You cannot have it both ways. This was what hit me so hard a couple years ago. I thought I was saved and then started looking at how I was living my life: chasing after money, bigger homes, nicer cars, upgraded kitchens, etc etc etc. These things are a waste of time. One of my good friends calls it “shining the poo.” That is all we are really doing when you really think about it. It is a funny turn of phrase but it makes sense. Compared to where we are going (if you are indeed headed for Heaven) then anything we love in this world is pretty much poo.
One of the saddest things about life is the fact that we are the only ones to blame for how crazy our life is. I see many many of my friends overwhelmed with busy schedules so much so that they scarcely have time to spend in solid Bible study, reading, and prayer with God. There is no time to meet with friends, no ability to “pop over” for tea. No time to help out when a sister is in need. All because we have mistakenly chased after the things the world tells us we need to chase after.
I get it. We are all busy especially this time of year. Martin Luther used to say when he had a busy day he would get up an extra hour early to get in 2 hours of Bible study and prayer in but when he had an extra busy day ahead of him and he knew he was barely going to be able to fit it all in he would get up 2 hours early to spend 3 hours with The LORD.
Spending 3 hours with God in the morning may seem unrealistic but my conscience bears witness against it being unrealistic. My spirit tells me I need to do as much as I can to be in the Word. Below are some of the potential lies we have eaten hook, line, and sinker (think about that phrase for a sec.) You have swallowed EVERY BIT of the lie. While the items on the below list are not inherently bad, some are, in fact, quite good, you need to check who you are serving and what your motives are for doing them. The things the world wants you to serve or God?
God comes first, then your husband, then your kids, then your family, then your church family, then your co-workers, and on down the line. This is not about hours in your day, of course you need to work 8-9 hours a day. This is about who you are and your priorities. Click on the Green Pyramid and read the things we should focus on when we interact with different people in our lives. God and prayer should be a part of every one. Consider if you are trapped in any of the following areas and how you can lighten your load.
All this leads to being overwhelmed. I encourage you to ruthlessly edit your life. Stop carving out time for God and make him the largest section of your waking hours Life Pyramid. Resolve to commit to under commit.
by Jen O’Sullivan (also featured on Linked Cycling Women)
I’ve been reading AW Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” and Jay Adams “The Grand Demonstration.” I love reading and have listed some great books below if you are looking for a reading list. One thing I love about reading is gaining a perspective on something I never have thought of before. Like the new movie that is out right now about Saving Christmas with Kirk Cameron. The perspective shift is wonderful and helpful in defining or redefining our preconceived notions about Christmas and all its hoopla. With what I am learning from Tozer and Adams is that part of the major area of concern is the fact that we are at fault of “libel on His character” through our self-derived assumptions about who God is and that it is “in itself a monstrous sin” as stated by Tozer (see full excerpt below). Adams states “Speculation about the ways of God that He has not revealed to us is wrong. To do it is attempted robbery. If, as He says, unrevealed truths about Himself and His purposes “belong” to Him, and not to us, the attempt to pry those secrets from His hand by means of human reasoning is nothing less than attempted theft.”
“Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is — in itself a monstrous sin — and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness. Always this God will conform to the image of the one who created it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges.” – A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
Alphabetized by Author’s First Name
A.W. Tozer
The Knowledge of the Holy
A.W. Tozer
The Pursuit of God
A.W. Tozer
Tozer: Mystery of the Holy Spirit (Pure Gold Classics)
David Platt
Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live.
Dr. Emerson Eggerichs
Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs
Francis Chan
Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
Gregory Koukl
Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions
Jay Adams
The Grand Demonstration
Kyle Idleman
Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart
Lee Strobel
The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus
Mike Fabarez
Getting It Right: The Real Problem and God’s Perfect Solution
Mike Fabarez
Why the Bible?
Robert E. Coleman
Master Plan of Evangelism, The
Many of you know my story (you can read my testimony here) and why my heart is so set on reaching out to people who identify with Christ but may not display characteristics of what the Bible says a follower of Jesus should look like. I identified with Christ fully and completely. I was on his team. I was a big BIG fan and was emotionally and physically involved in my relationship with him. That is why I am so passionate about this. Had you told me in 2012 that you thought I was not a Christian I would have laughed at you. But I wasn’t. Sure, I loved Jesus, and everything he stood for. Loved going to church. Loved singing praise to him. But I was not willing to do everything he asked of me in the Bible. I was what they call a cafeteria Christian, picking and choosing the theology that worked for me and placing the rest in a file I called “antiquated”.
Jump forward a year and a half later as a full-fledged, bonafide, all-in, do-what-the-Bible-says, newborn Christian and I can tell you something that only is clear to me now. As they say hindsight is 20-20. The biggest mistake I made as a “Christian” (placed in quotes because I was not a Christian) was in creating my own version of who God is. I was majorly guilty of boldly and arrogantly (and ignorantly) breaking the first and second commandments. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not worship idols. I was a god-creating idolator in the first degree. I placed the word ignorantly in parenthesis because, while I should not blame my own sin on anyone other than myself, I do know that the majority of my issue came from a product of poor theology and a low view of God directly from the pulpit. I was given a large dose of what I call “Pulpit Puppet Theology”; a watered-down, sugary, stage-show of a God that in reality if you came face to face with him would crush the very soul you cling so tightly to. A soul that you view as somewhat clean and acceptable, yet with just a glimpse of God you would see in yourself a grotesque and unspeakably ugly sinner.
If you are a Christian or perhaps an unknowing “Christian” I encourage you to do one thing over the next month, and hopefully from there for the rest of your life. Study who God is. Raise your view of him. Put him back in his high and lifted up place. Look at the throne-room of your heart and daily replace yourself on that throne with Christ. Visualize it. Pray for it. Study it. Research it. Dig deep. I heard someone say at a conference that the first time they went to Japan, they came back thinking they knew everything. The second time they went they came back realizing how much more they wanted to learn. The third time, the realized just how much there is to learn and that they only scratched the surface. As I sat there listening to this man talking about business, I thought, “that is so true about God”. The more you dig into understanding who he is, the more you will realize the magnitude of your original view and how far you are from reaching a truly correct view of him. Someday in Heaven we will have a better understanding, but for now, Christian, don’t assume you know.
“OMG.” You see it everywhere in hashtags, on billboards, in texts, even on TV show title sequences. Can I tell you something? It breaks my heart. Seriously. Every time I see it or hear it, my heart crushes into my chest a little deeper. There are variations too on the same thing: Oh Em Gee, Oh My Gosh, Oh my God, Jeez, Jesus, they all stem from the same deplorable thing: breaking the third commandment. This is not a joke. It is a serious thing. Taking the LORD’s name in vain should not be a product of the time we live in. Be clear on this, it is a product of the deceptive design of Satan.
I am going to bring up something now that might be controversial. I will not apologize. I love you too much for that and too much is at stake. You may have been a Christian for a while and gotten desensitized to this. It is possible that this is not an issue for you because it never occurred to you that it is considered a sin (one of the top 3 by the way). But maybe, just maybe you are not fully saved. OK, now before you get defensive consider this: I spent 25 years thinking I was saved. On this topic I pretty much steered clear of saying “Oh my God” but occasionally I’d say it. Jeez was a regular statement for me. Then, I actually got saved. I was 39. Instantly my spirit was crushed every time I heard or saw any of the phrases taking the LORD’s name in vain. It was like the moment you decide you want to have a baby all you see are babies everywhere. It was all I could do to stop my ears. No one told me this, it was the Spirit inside me that was grieving what my own spirit never grieved before.
I am not saying that you personally are not saved if you say or use any of those statements, however I kind of am. Check yourself. While I am not God and I clearly do not have it all worked out I do know the God’s law is written on my heart and without any warning or theological training, this specific thing was so palpable written on my heart when I got saved and still is that I cannot help but think it should at least be viewed as a red flag and worth digging deeper to see if you are truly saved.
There have been two things I have been working on lately: humility and holiness. Humility seems somehow unattainable while holiness seems completely, unrealistically unattainable. The thing that keeps us from humility is our very palpable pride. The thing that keeps us from holiness is our very selfish self. The thing they both have in common is the Holy Spirit. None can be attained without Him.
Andrew Murray in his book “Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness” states, “The chief mark of counterfeit holiness is its lack of humility.” To fully understand humility we only have to look to its source: Jesus. To fully understand holiness we only have to give up everything to that Source.
Murray goes on to say “Jesus the Holy One is the humble One: the holiest will always be the humblest. There is none holy but God: we have as much holiness as we have God. And according to what we have of God will be our real humility, because humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all.”
Resolve to be holy. Resolve to be humble. Find humility and you will find holiness. Give everything everything everything to God today and spend as much time as you can with the Source.
Holy. Just. Love. 