Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” -John 20:28
Even “Doubting” Thomas believes. It took an encounter with Jesus, but it happened. To meet Jesus changes everything.
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More than once I have heard God say that power belongs to him and that his love is constant. –Psalm 62:11,12 b (GN trans)
Recently a young woman came to our church saying she was overwhelmed with life. She thought it hopeless and didn’t see how she could go on.
Do you sometimes feel a little overwhelmed with life? Does it sometimes seem like no matter how hard you try, no matter how many times you overcome particular obstacles, life just keeps relentlessly eroding your strength, your resolve, your confidence? Does it seem to you, that life just becomes more and more complicated and harder to keep together?
Flip Wilson once expressed it this way. “If I had my entire life to live over, I doubt if I’d have the strength.” Dilbert, the comic strip character had this advice: “When you don’t know what to do, walk fast and look worried. Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
Jesus warned his disciples these times would come. He paints a rather gloomy picture of the course of history. We are specifically told that it is not about progress—things aren’t getting better and better. To the contrary, civilization will become more and more dangerous, more and more ungodly, more and more inhuman. Only God’s personal intervention will bring this to an end.
He warned of the threat it poses to our spirit. He described it in terms of its effect on the heart. Hearts will fail for fear. There is the danger of our hearts becoming “weighed down” so much that we would be unable to keep our spiritual perspective and could even be caught unprepared for God’s glorious intervention.
At her request, I prayed with the young woman mentioned earlier. I also shared with her these words from Psalm 62: One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you O God, are strong, and that you O Lord, are loving. It is critical that we hold those two things together. But it is not easy. We tend to either emphasize God’s love or God’s power. Put those two things together and nothing is hopeless. God cares about you and will use his power for your good.
Yes, we live in perilous times for the human spirit. Yet we live in times of unprecedented opportunities and are closer to God’s final victory than any people have ever been.
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My former District Superintendent, Chuck Kellogg, tells this story from his time in Vietnam. He said his unit lost 19 men in combat. One of the men a Californian, Bill Rhodes, was killed on February 6, 1971. “Bill was not a believer in Christ. But a Sgt. Avery frequently witnessed to Bill and the rest of us about matters of faith and prayed for all of us.
Sgt. Avery felt compelled to visit Bill’s mother (Avery lives in California). He was very apprehensive about doing so. Upon arrival Bill’s mother warmly greeted Sgt. Avery. She has a letter in her hand written by her son, Bill. He said he had accepted Jesus Christ as his savior and Lord and he wanted her, his mother, to be the first to know. The letter was dated February 5th.”
Prayer, what a mystery—what a power! We often never know the effects of our prayers. But God assures us they are effective—James 1:16b The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
Want to make a difference in a life, in the world? Pray. Check out Messiah’s Prayer Team Ministry.
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And no temptation is irresistible. You can trust God to keep the temptation from becoming so strong that you can’t stand up against it. (I Corinthians 10:13 LB)
Years ago I read a story that offers some insight into temptation. An antelope and a lion entered a diner and took a booth near the window. When the waiter approached, the antelope said, “I’ll have a bowl of hay and a side order of radishes.”
“And what will your friend have?”
“Nothing,” replied the antelope.
The waiter persisted. “Isn’t he hungry?”
“Hey, if he were hungry,” said the antelope, “would I be sitting here?”
Temptation is a powerful force in our life. If the temptation is strong enough, even a friend can “eat” a friend.
There are a lot of temptations which can make it difficult for those trying to follow Jesus. I just read today about a study on will power:
Dr. Loran Nordgren, a senior lecturer at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, found “we tend to overestimate how much self-control we will have against temptation when we’re not in the ‘heat of the moment.’”… Dr. Nordgren warned that “Those who are most confident about their self-control are the most likely to give in to temptation.” His conclusion was that a key element in overcoming temptation is simply humility. Recognizing our weaknesses and avoiding situations where we are tempted.
Some other important ways which enable resistance are:
Temptation does not lessen with spiritual growth and health. It becomes more subtle, sophisticated and powerful. But we also have greater power and resources to overcome it.
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I John 3:2 we are God’s children now; …we will be like him.
All important events in the life cycle are connected to certain rituals which most of us know and in which we readily share. For instance—when a baby is born:
“Who does she/he look like?”
“He has his Dad’s nose.”
“Her face is shaped just like her mother’s.”
Now, often that is not a fact so much as expectation. We look for and expect a child to resemble its parents and family members. As a child grows it usually exhibits more and more traits of family. It may not be so noticeable to those who see it every day but is often obvious to others.
So when John says we are God’s children, it raises some expectations. If you were reading this in the Greek text, it would say “NOW we are God’s children.” The emphasis is on the “now.” In context, it is clear that those who are trusting Jesus belong to God’s family.
To say we are God’s children has powerful implications. Not the least of which is that it establishes our identity. To know who you are, to have a sense of identity, may well be one of the most important factors in your mental and emotional health. If you do not have a sense of identity, if you do not know who you are, chances are, you have some real problems in your life. This is especially important in our day, because we live in a world where there is a tendency to treat a person as an object, to manipulate a person, to see a person as disposable, to see one as useful only as he/she serves me and my ends.
To have a sense of belonging, to have a sense of identity is also vital to our spiritual health. Often when someone introduces me, they tell my name but add something to that. He’s our neighbor, a pastor at Messiah Church, Alana’s husband. And the less they know me personally, the more likely they are to do that, to identify me by my function, my job.
Probably you have been identified, not by who you are so much, as by some relationship—Joe Blow’s wife or Susie Blow’s husband, or by some job you perform.
But when we say we are God’s children, it establishes our identity, not by our function or even just our relationship but OUR NATURE. The CHRISTIAN LIFE IS NOT SIMPLY TAKING ORDERS FROM GOD OR EVEN FOLLOWING JESUS’ EXAMPLE. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS LIVING OUT A NEW NATURE, being part of a new kind of people. Obviously as to “behaving like God’s children” most of us have a ways to go. The child is not yet what he/she may become. But the genes are there and with normal growth and development maturity will come.
And we have that amazing promise: “We shall be like Him!” “Not yet but shall be” is essential to being human. There is always the tension between what I am (performance) and what I shall be. As Gordon Allport has said, “All people are in transit.”
Are you anxious to be like Jesus? Keep trusting him and following and it will happen.
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Whoever would love life… -I Peter 3:10
How important is life to you; to most people? Who wants to die?
The rather normal and expected answers are that everyone (unless something is wrong with them) believes life precious and clings to it.
So the text which says “whoever wishes to love life” seems strange to us. The suggestion that ordinary, normal, healthy people may not love life is met with disbelief. Is Peter so out of touch with reality? Or, is he talking to people for whom life is so painful and difficult that anything would be better?
At first glance, the latter seems to be a likely explanation—these people are in the midst of, or at least facing terrible persecution. This is an underlying theme of the whole letter. Certainly that would be an important message for people for whom life has dealt a cruel hand.
However, giving that its due credit, when you see the solution he suggests, it becomes clear that this applies to everyone not just a hand-full of persecuted first century Christians.
It is a fact that not everyone loves life. In the Bible, the writer of Ecclesiastes is direct: “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (Ecc. 2:17)
Peter wrote in a day of much cynicism about life and it is a growing attitude in our time. Earnest Hemingway expressed it when he said, “I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug into.” For many, life is characterized by frustration and boredom.
Do you love life? I don’t mean do you want to live as the better of two alternatives. It is one thing to say we love life in the abstract and quite another to love the particulars of our life.
The pursuit of satisfaction in life is major preoccupation of an affluent society. Some seek it in success. Others believe possessions, things deliver what they long for. Years ago I read this story:
A wealthy man moved into a new house, next-door to a Quaker. Quakers believe in plainness and simplicity. The Quaker watched as the moving company unloaded a great amount of furniture, clothes, and decorative things.
Finally, he walked over to his new neighbor and said, “Neighbor, if thee hath need of anything, please come to see me and I will tell thee how to get along without it.”
To those early Christians, persecuted and suffering, Peter tells the secret to loving life whatever one’s circumstances: “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it.”
In short, do good. Goodness is not just what you ought to do, it is also the best way to live. It is living in tune with God and His ways, it is living the way we were intended, the way we work best. What you say and do, the way you relate to people is the key to loving life.
The kind of goodness called for begins with love for Christ. “In your hearts give Christ a unique place.” I Peter 3:15 (Barclay)
Do you want to love life? Make Jesus Lord of your life.
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“Wait.” “Now is the time…now is the day.” -Acts 1:4, I Corinthians 6:2
Do you remember the Fram oil filter commercial. A mechanic tells about a major repair job on a car, and suggests that if the owner had spent a little more on a Fram filter it could have been avoided. And then, he holds up a filter and utters the ultimate advertising wisdom, “Pay me now or pay me later.”
It is a classic human dilemma—tension between having it now or later, living for the present or the future. For almost all of our early lives, there is someone telling us to wait for something:
wait until you’re old enough to go to school
wait until you’re in High School
wait until you’re married
wait until you’re through with your education
wait until you have a good job
wait until you have some security to get married
There are right and wrong times to wait. Some years ago this story appeared in Reader’s Digest:
An Air Force TAIL-GUNNER was being court-martialed. “What did you hear in your headset?” demanded a superior officer. “Well,” replied the airman, “I heard my squadron leader holler, ‘Enemy planes at five o’clock!'” “What action did you take?” persisted another officer. “Why, sir,” replied the gunner, “I just sat back and waited. It was only 4:30.”
There are some people who live their whole lives in the waiting mode. They never seem to “experience life.” Totally goal oriented, so much so that when they get there, satisfaction, fulfillment seems to allude them.
On the other hand, there are competing voices saying do it now. Our desires often want it now, want immediate gratification. Our environment, advertising says, “Have it now, buy now, pay later.” “Grab all the gusto you can.”
When life is lived on this basis—pursuit of immediate gratification, we are robbed of the most important things in life, like character, meaning, joy. These things only come with time.
Some might suggest that this is a non-issue from a Christian perspective. All Christian living is future oriented, is lived for future results/rewards. And in one sense that is true but it is short of the whole truth. You will find both “wait” and “now” in the Bible:
The problem is that we are inclined to want to put off what we ought to do now and to want now what can only come in time. How can we live making the most of the present but also building for the future?
Know that life as God intends it is both an experience to be appreciated/ enjoyed/ lived now and a goal, destination to be anticipated. The living now and the future are part of the same parcel. The secret is trusting God and living with sensitivity to God’s timing.
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I have set before you life and death….Now choose life. –Deuteronomy 30:19
We all probably have received a gift of something which we didn’t really want. That ugly picture which Aunt Sally gave us, she expects to see hanging on a wall every time she visits. Some gifts, ugly or useless in themselves we cherish because our son or daughter (or grandchild) made it. Usually, a gift is appreciated, valuable or not, if we know the motivation is one of love or care for us.
Did you know the most awful gift you’ve ever received came from God and was motivated by pure and perfect love. It was also incredibly expensive. That’s crazy you say. We know “every good and perfect gift comes from God.” God doesn’t give bad gifts. However, awful is not the same as bad. In fact, the awful gift is also a wonderful gift.
What is this awful but wonderful gift? It is the freedom to choose against God, to reject God, to choose not to believe God, to trust God, to love God. In fact, it is the freedom to choose death. It is wonderful because it means we can also choose for God, to love and serve God. You can’t have one without the other. To freely choose God is greatest of all choices, but that means it is possible to make the awful decision to “go it” without God.
And make no mistake, ultimately it is always a choice. What’s your choice? Click here for help on choosing.
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The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ,…The people were all so amazed. Mark 1:1, 22a
A computer lease we were looking at “seemed too good to be true.” It was.
We all know the feeling—something is so wondrous so great, so joyful, that it just couldn’t be true.
Such things just don’t happen in a mixed-up, disappointing, sin and sorrow-filled world. And that is exactly the feeling created in anyone who really begins to “breathe” the atmosphere of the New Testament. The news about Jesus seems almost too good to be true.
To be sure, the watered-down version that many have heard from their youth up and which the church too often seems to teach isn’t so hard to believe. This collection of religious sentiments somehow (we’re not quite sure how) built around the person of Jesus who was a very good man, is not hard to believe and creates no feeling of wonder and amazement and certainly had little power to transform lives. But the unedited biblical version is a different story.
Get this—Jesus is the Son of God. Even the demons recognized they were not dealing with just another human being, exclaiming, “You are the holy one of God!” As Jesus came to John for baptism in the Jordan river, there is an accreditation, an approval expressed by God the Father: “You are my son, and I am delighted in you.” God among mortals! And we think, “That’s too good to be true.”
But notice the impact Jesus had on those who heard him, those who walked with him, those outside as well as within his circle. As they heard his teaching, saw him in action, it seems Mark “ransacked” the Greek dictionary trying to express their amazement, astonishment, wonder, awe in the presence of this person. It’s too good to be true!
In what is said to be representative of a typical day in the life of Jesus, he casts out demons, heals Peter’s mother-in-law who was sick with a fever, reaches out to touch one legally untouchable and cures the incurable leper. His loving compassion and power which heals, and his wisdom which enlightens are amazing.
Then it begins to dawn on us what the NT is trying to say, “that is what God is really like.” This Jesus, whom the whole world looks to as the epitome, example of love, concern, the best in human kind, is what God is like! He is not just a man but God among men! It’s all too good to be true!
Just like the man who saw Jesus heal his son of a spirit which caused him to fall into the fire and go through horrible agony, when Jesus asks, “Do you believe?” responds, “I believe, help my unbelief.” We begin to understand a little of what the man was trying to express. I do believe! I want to believe! But it’s too good to be true!
While we’re trying to catch our breath, get our minds around the idea, “God is like this,” we are brought to our knees by the this: Jesus is one of us. His life becomes a pattern for me/you. As surely as Mark will not let us forget that this is God’s own son, so likewise he will not let us escape the fact that He was a real human being.
He sets the pattern for every true disciple (Jesus follower). A decision to trust God, acceptance of a calling/mission and dedication to it, set the boundaries of life. And with that, there is the equipment, power of the Holy Spirit descending on Him, to give Him the ability to perform the mission. So, we make our choice, dedicate ourselves, and God fills us with His spirit and empowers us. But we think, “it’s too good to be true.
In his powerful book, A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken tell how he and his wife, became Christians.
They considered themselves pagans. They began by believing the Christian gospel had nothing to say to them. Over a period of time, Vanauken and his wife began to consider the meaning of the gospel. Not taking that way easily, He said,
“we discovered much more than we had expected: The personality of Jesus emerged from the Gospels with astonishing consistency. Whenever they were written, they were written in the shadow of a personality so tremendous that Christians who may never have seen him knew him utterly: that strange mixture of unbearable sternness and heartbreaking tenderness.
What was happening seemed to happening against his will. But as he read and thought and talked with these Christians what seemed almost too good to be true was becoming harder and harder to escape. Vanauken saw the issue and saw it clearly:
Christianity had come to seem to us probable. It all hinged on this Jesus. Was he, in fact, the Lord Messiah, the Holy one of Israel, the Christ? Was he, indeed, the incarnate God? Very God of very God? This was the heart of the matter. [Did] he rise from the dead? The Apostles, the Evangelists, Paul believed it with utter conviction. Could we believe on their belief? Believe in a miracle?
He goes on to describe his growing excitement. As he began to think that it all might really be true, it began to dawn on him that the highest aspirations and deepest longings of his life came together at the person of Jesus Christ and the gospel. And almost against his will he is driven to Jesus.
As he read the New Testament, the incredibly good news broke through—and hoping against hope, for it was just too good to be true: Vanauken them came to a turning point: “I could not go back….I had encountered Jesus….It was a question whether I was to accept Him—or reject. (When I saw that) I could not reject Jesus.”
When you really meet the Christ in the pages of the NT, the sheer excitement of it all makes it seem too good to be true. Mark’s whole gospel is predicated on the conviction that once he tells you what Jesus did and said you will know who He is—God’s own son, but also one of us; our savior but also our example.
HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT JESUS?
IT IS TRUE, YOU KNOW!
If you do not know Him, you can invite Him into you life now. click here for how.
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After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,…will himself RESTORE (PERFECT) you. I Peter 5:10
One evening, G.K. Chesterton and some writers were discussing what single book they would choose if they were stranded on a desert island. One writer quickly said, “The complete works of Shakespeare.” Another responded, “I’d choose the Bible.” When Chesterton was asked, he replied, “I would choose Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.”
Now what Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding would be to a person stranded on a desert island, the Bible is to those whom Peter says are “strangers in the world.”
All through this letter of 105 verses Peter has talked of what it means for them to live as followers of Jesus:
Joy in midst of sadness,
holy,
submissive,
loving life,
and stewards of the grace of God.
He sums it up in a final and wonderful encouragement to stand firm, because God will “exalt you” (v 6).
Then he adds one more basic necessity for spiritual victory, to come out of a world like this intact: v10- “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,…will himself RESTORE (PERFECT) you.
It is not easy to live as strangers in the world. There are pressures—our internal weaknesses, circumstances, others, even persecution. Most of all Peter reminds us of the enemy of souls, who like a roaring lion prowls looking for victims. Living in a world where we are strangers and which is often hostile can take its toll—deterioration, wearing and tearing.
Who of us have not retreated from engagement with life, the worse for wear—wounded, damaged, broken. What congregation has not known conflict, division, in the struggle to be God’s people.
But Peter reminds us, restoration is God’s special work. God is not a throw-away God. He puts things back together, restores, perfects. Frazzled, at loose ends, in pieces? God will repair to perfection.
What is special here is the emphasis—it is God’s personal work. God does not leave this to instrumental means, but it is His own “personal active ministry to His people.” And it is true grace. Peter was exhibit A. This could not have been lost on those to whom he wrote. They were too near to it.
When the struggle, the battle has taken its toll, God’s word to us is not just “try again”, “try harder” but grace, “true grace” which is all we need.
And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified. (Acts 20:32)
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Discipleship at Messiah 