Watch Yourself!!!

I had a really interesting experience a few days ago. I had a day off from work and Abby and I decided that we were going to take Zion to the "park" over at the East Mall. This playground is great!! It's inside the mall so we can go there in the winter and it is usually full of kids, so it's a great time for Zion to just run around and have fun.

Well on this particular day it was jammed pack with kids...of all ages. It's always funny to see the differences in boys and girls and their reactions to younger kids. The girls usually are very careful and help the children smaller than themselves...where as the boys just plow over anything (no matter the age) that gets in their way.

There was one little boy who was playing right in front of where I was sitting and just causing all kinds of chaos. His mother, from a few feet away, told him that he needed to watch what he was doing. His response just made me laugh inside because it sooooo reflected the human condition. He said, "I don't want to...that takes too much effort!!!" Pretty smart for a 5 or 6 year old.

All through out the bible, specifically in the New Testament, God has given us instructions that have this idea with it, "Watch what your are doing!!!" and when we read them, or study them in Sunday School or hear a sermon preached on how we are too behave as "followers of Christ" we think that sounds really nice. However, when it comes to applying those instruction to our lives, I think our reaction is similar to what the boy said at the playground, "...that takes too much effort!!".

The thing is he is right!! It does take a lot of effort to watch and keep in check how we behave, I think that's why there are so many verses that tell us to watch out, stay away from such or such and keep ourselves in line.

I don't know where in the history of the American church or the history of mankind but somewhere we got the idea that everything in life should be easy and if there is the slightest bit of difficulty attached to something, we should not do it. What an awful, evil, lazy way of thinking. The bible is clear that things that we labor, suffer and work hard for bring the most satisfying results.

Something that Jesus said in John has really be on my mind lately. He said, if you love me you will obey my commandments. Not some of the time, all the time. Not the commandments you want to follow, all the commandments. Not obey, as in 50% or less, obey 100%. If we are going to be people who claim to follow Jesus Christ and love God, we need to obey the commands he has given us and included in that is "Watch what you are doing!!".

I encourage you, take the time and make the effort to be self-controlled. Keep yourself in check, watch what you are doing, read and obey the commands God has given us in his word. He put them there so that you and I could live the best life possible.

May our LORD be with you
Josh

Epic Fail

Man I really blew it this time. Yesterday will go down in history as probably one of the worst personal days I have ever lived. I won't bore you with all the details but allow me to sum up the situation.

I have really bad allergies that I am fighting. Whenever the weather shifts drastically like it did this week from cold to warm, I get all stuffed up and miserable. This is accompanied by a headache from all the pressure...it's just awful.

So with all that we had Youth Group last night. In hind sight that was a mistake. I was in no position or condition mentally, emotionally or physically to teach and love on the students that came. In addition there was an Ash Wednesday service at the church so we were trying to be quite so as not to disturb what was going on upstairs. The result was an Epic Fail of an evening. I was short with some of the student, I did not speak in love and couldn't even finish my lesson, Ms Abby had to jump in and save me, but more importantly I failed to fulfill the mission that we strive for every Wednesday night.

We strive to create a loving, safe and God honoring environment for the students and I didn't do that plain and simple.

I can make any excuse in the book but the bottom line is I was out of line. I have some major apologizing to do to the group as a whole but also to some individual students.

I say all this to now say this. My experience last night is what happens when we try to rely on our own strength and not on God's. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians of a problem he was having. He asks God to take it away from him three times but God's response is, "My Grace is sufficient." God is saying don't rely on your own strength, rely on mine. Don't fight your battle alone, bring me in and fight for you.

Last night I should have prayed...hard...before group, that God would be my strength to teach and love on these students, especially in my weakened condition.

I want to encourage you in whatever situation you are in, don't rely on your strength, rely on God for your strength. When you do things on your own without God, bad things happen. God's grace is sufficient for us, I pray that we would rely on Him.

May our LORD be with you
Josh

Cease to exist

The longer I live my life as a follower of Christ and the more I read the Word of God and the more I spend time with and am friends with other "followers" of Christ, I see a lot of things that don't make sense to me.

That having been said I want to keep my blog short today (praise God). I read something this morning that I don't think a lot of followers of Christ realize or take and own as their own. 1 Peter 2:24 says this "He (Jesus) himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed."

I just want to point out one thing, that word that Peter used "die", he said we (who are in Christ) did that to our sin. The word die means to cease to exist. You (if you are in Christ) have ceased to exist to sin, it no longer has a hold on you, because you are dead to it and are now alive to doing what is right because of Jesus.

So why do sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many people who "follow Christ" still live in and/or give into their sin.

Listen to me my friend, my loved one, you who are reading these words. If you are in Christ, you have asked Jesus to be apart of your life....sin does not have a hold on you...so STOP GIVING INTO IT!!!!!!! You have ceased to exist to your sin, so start living and doing what is right!!!!!!!

Peter said that Jesus bore our sin, so when we continue to sin even after we have given our lives to him it is like spitting on his sacrifice or slapping him in the face while he hangs on the cross for you!!

Yes, you are a human so you will struggle with sin because (unfortunately) it is a part of our human nature, but you don't have to give into it. You have freedom in Christ to overcome it. Take hold of that freedom.

I normally like to add some kind of practical stuff here at the end but this my friend is something you need to figure for yourself. What have I (you) been doing lately that is sinful? What attitude or action have I been giving into that goes against what God says in his Word?

Until we decide in ourselves to cease to exist to the sinful habits, hurts and hangup that we struggle with we CANNOT be effective disciples of Jesus.

may our LORD be with you
Josh

The Upper and Lower Nature

Sometimes writing this blog is really frustrating. There are so many times I want to write but nothing good comes out, so the whole thing gets scrapped. Most of the time I wait for the Holy Spirit to move within me.

Well this is one of those times. I am reading through 1 Peter right now and I came across a verse and the wording hit me just right today. Let me give you a little bit of background first on how I got to this point. Currently I am taking Biblical Hermeneutics at LBC, that is the study of studying the Bible (there is a right and wrong way to do it believe it or not). In my studies we are learning that when we study the scriptures on our own it is a good idea to have several SCHOLARLY translations. Normally I use the ESV as my study bible, I really like the language. It's close to the original translations without losing the grammatical structure that would make it hard to understand. But I have also brought back my Amplified Bible, which is a literal word for word (and expansion on some words) translation and can, at times, be difficult to understand because the grammatical structure is different .

Anyway, I am reading 1 Peter in the Amp Bible and I cam across this verse that hit me and made me think. 1 Peter 2:11, "Beloved, I implore you as so-journers, strangers and exiles [in this world] to abstain from the sensual urges-the evil desires, the passions of the flesh [YOUR LOWER NATURE]- that wage war against your soul." emphasis mine

Now with the AMP Bible it sometimes will expound on certain words to make them more clear. I love how this verse expounds on the word flesh as "your lower nature."

In his book "Sex God" Rob Bell makes a very interesting point that most people, including Christians do not think about. He says that angles are spirit being, in other words, beings of the Spiritual world. Animals however are bodies without spirits, so they are merely of the physical world.

So where does that leave us as humans?

Are we merely physical bodies or are merely spiritual beings or.....are we both?

C.S. Lewis once said of humans, "You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body." We, being created in God's image have the best of both worlds. We have physical bodies that live on the physical earth and we are souls, spiritual being who live with Jesus.

These words of Peter carry a little more weight to them now don't they? The two aspects of a human (flesh and soul) are constantly at war with each other. One is pulling toward God and the other is pulling away from God. This is the point that Bell makes in his book. We can choose to be like animals, totally subject to our physical bodies and the passions that drive it, which leads to destruction and death. Or we can choose to be like angels, totally subject to our spirit, which leads to an upright life in the most extreme sense. Some may label you a prude in this scenario.

Or, we can live as God created us....human....right in the middle. We have these passions of the flesh (animal) but when we do life right and keep things like that in check (spirit) we begin to live as God designed us to live. Evil desires, passions of the flesh are not from God, they are a result of sin. However aspects of our physical bodies (emotions, ability of love and sorrow) God did give us, so to go to one extreme or the other (animal or angel) is denying the other part of how God designed and created us.

Let me give you an example. In a physical relationship, our flesh would tell us to just do what feels good and satisfy the desire we have right now. Live on instinct, have relations with anything and everything and everyone. Our spirit would tells us quite the opposite.
But as a human, in the middle, we can do things right (the way God created us for). We have these desires but if we hold off the desires until the appropriate time (marriage) we can express them in a safe and ultimately satisfying situation.

So it is important to remember that we are split into the "lower nature" and "upper nature" and that they are at war with each other. This really can effect every aspect of our lives. When you get super angry about something, which is a physical emotion, you can be an animal and respond by punching a locker or another human being. Or you can take that physical emotion and apply your soul to it. Perhaps you are not angry for a physical emotion reason. Perhaps your anger is a deeper passion. You can use it for good, to make something in this world better. Let your physical emtion drive you to do a good work and make the world a better place.

Or maybe you are totally convicted by something. No matter what anyone says you believe this...let that beliefe reflect in your physical, bodily behavior so that others may catch your fire.

Keep in mind that it is a war, so you flesh will draw you away from God with these evil desires and fleshly passions. Peter says that we are so-journers, exiles, we don't belong here on earth. We are a soul with a body, we belong in heaven, we belong to God.

So let us as exiles and God's people do life right. Verse 12 says "Conduct yourself properly,".

Do life right!!


may our LORD be with you
Josh