Category Archives: Blog

My Beloved

“How is your beloved better than others, most beautiful of women?“

Song of Songs 5:9

How indeed.

My Beloved has a love like no other.

I have never known a love like His. So consistent, so willing to remain no matter what. A love that I have never had to earn, or fear losing. His is a love that heals and binds and pursues and protects and holds on and persists beyond the boundaries of my understanding. All other loves have broken me, but not His. His made me whole.

My Beloved is truer than any other.

His love is wrapped in mercy and grace and compassion that is not of this place. He has no flaw, no hidden agenda, no selfish motives. He will never show a dark side or prove to be someone other than who He has always been. And if I searched a million days and a million ways I would find no lie in Him, and He has never, not one time, gone back on His word. 

My Beloved is more faithful than any other.

He will never tire of me. Ever. He chose me and has no regret, no wondering if He made the right choice, no question, no moment of wishing He had chosen differently. I’ve never seen His back, even when He has seen mine. He has never let me down, left me disappointed, never made me feel used or too much or not enough. Every day He wants my presence, wants to hear my voice, wants to hold my heart.

My Beloved is more powerful than any other.

His power is unmatched in heaven or on earth. He makes darkness run and hide just by showing up. He makes mountains melt and is an impenetrable shield around me. He can calm any storm, split any sea, heal any disease, rend any veil, move any stone, and change any heart.

Jesus, You are better than any other, in more ways than I can count. I long to bow before You, throw down every crown, and give You endless praise. You are my first love, my King, my Savior, and my home.

The above was today’s devotional piece for Word of God Speak, my weekly email devotional, and this is my shameless pitch for you to subscribe to it. If you want. No pressure. Actually, you know what? Forget I said anything. Who needs another email? Seriously. Unless of course, you want to. Like, you’ve been wishing you could open an email on Fridays at 10 a.m. that would give you a little bite to eat, just a morsel to hold you over for a wee bit. I mean, if that’s the case then, by all means, you should totally hit the subscribe button below and fill out the very, very short form thingy. But only if you want to.

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Becoming Less

“So they came to John and told him, “Rabbi, the one you testified about, and who was with you across the Jordan, is baptizing—and everyone is going to Him.” (John 3:26)

“…He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

And the question is, are we willing to learn this most fundamental truth?

Can I handle decrease, even if everyone around me is increasing?

Can I step back instead of stepping up? Can I fade, or does that thought threaten something in me, some kind of need for affirmation? Can my sense of worth handle becoming less significant so that Jesus becomes the all in all He is meant to be?

Can I resist becoming offended when people go to Jesus instead of coming to me?

In my marriage. As a parent. In friendship. In my work. In ministry. As the Church.

Am I willing to become unseen, even after fighting my whole life to be seen? Oh my. That one hits me right in the social media plexus.

This topic could be fluffed up with a lot of words, but let’s not do that today. Today, let’s concentrate on one question –

What would it look like to decrease?

Because Jesus must increase.

It can be painful, or painless, depending on how much we are prepared to become less so that He becomes more.

Who Is With You?

“But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you.”

{Exodus 3:11-12}

Moses, a Hebrew raised as an Egyptian who was on the run for killing an Egyptian, meets God for the first time in a bush that was on fire. With no small talk and very little in the way of introduction, Moses is given his calling. Go back to Pharaoh, who happens to want you dead, and command him to release the people of God out of slavery. Wow. 

Naturally, Moses’ first question was “who am I to do such a thing?”. God’s answer to Moses’ insecurity? I will be with you.

In other words, who you are is less important than who will be with you.

The truth about most of us is that we would prefer to do what we feel capable of doing. We want to find what we’re good at and just stick with that, without wandering into places that wake up our insecurities. 

The truth about God is that He rarely calls us to do what we’re most comfortable doing but rather, He calls us to do what will require us to rely on Him. 

I am with you is not just a nice thing for God to say, it is His assurance that He’ll have our back. He will be there with all of His power, all of His authority, all of His wisdom, all of His strength – with all of Him. He’s not saying I’ll be there, watching it all unfold. He’s saying I’ll be with you in this thing. We will be together.

And He didn’t just say it to Moses. He repeats it over and over in His Word, and, it’s one of the last things Jesus said to His disciples.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” {Matthew 28:19-20}

What if Moses had said no? I fully believe that God still would have brought His people out of Egypt, because He is sovereign, and His plans cannot be thwarted. However, Moses would have missed out on what turned out to be the greatest relationship any man has ever had with God.

Father, I trust You. I pray that I will not seek out only what I am confident I can do in my own ability, but that I would be willing to go wherever You send me, do whatever You ask of me, knowing that You will be with me. I don’t want to miss a thing, Lord, not one thing that You want to give me, do with me or through me, speak to me, or work into me.

Internet Theology

“I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish My covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.”

{Genesis 6:17-18}

 I recently saw a meme that said something along these lines:

God never told Noah not to invite other people onto the Ark.

On the surface, that sounds good. Very inclusionary. Unfortunately, it lacks theological soundness. First of all, it casts blame on Noah that doesn’t belong to him. Second, just because God did not specifically say something, does not mean He did not specifically imply it. He made it clear that He was going to destroy every living thing on the earth, but, He was making a covenant with a specific family – Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. The implication is that Noah and his family were not given permission to invite any other people into a covenant God was choosing to make.

The suggestion of the meme is that it was not God’s intention to exclude people from the ark, but that it was Noah who chose to exclude. That goes down easy in a culture that is rallying around the word “inclusion” right now, and often the snowballed effect of that easy thought process is “God would never send anyone to hell”. The everyone goes to heaven and all roads lead to God theology, which bears no resemblance to the scriptures, is shaped by culture, not truth.

This is the danger of letting the internet determine what we believe about God. We end up with a god created in someone else’s image, and we don’t know the God in whose image we have been made.

Social media is full of things that sound good and it’s tempting to adopt them as truth. Beware! In the Word of God we have been given what is true, not just what sounds true. This is where our theology is built. The Bible is our plumbline against which every other thing must align itself.

Father, help us to let our theology be shaped by Your Word and not by our culture. Teach us and help us to steward well the truth You have given us. 

Living His Truth: Persecuted (the promise of God)

We will be hated.

We will be insulted.

People will lie about us.

We will be driven out of places.

We will suffer for Jesus.

Welcome to the gritty side of the gospel. The side we don’t talk about much.

You will be hated by everyone because of Me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. – Matthew 10:22

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.- 2 Timothy 3:12–13

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. – John 15:18

There’s more, but I think those will suffice for this point to be made:

Persecution is a promise from God.

That promise is full of unspoken truths, and one of those is that we do not have the right to NOT be persecuted. Our country’s Constitution makes every attempt to ensure that we have the freedom to practice our faith openly and without fear. But the Constitution is not a God-breathed document. Only scripture can claim His breath, and scripture makes us a promise that we will suffer persecution on various levels.

The culture likes to tell us that faith is a private choice, to be kept between us and our God, and we shouldn’t push our beliefs on anyone. At the same time, culture also wants total affirmation and agreement of their life choices, complete with parades and twisty pronouns.

Truth: While our faith is based on an individual relationship with God, it was never intended to be private.

Private faith has no reason to be persecuted, nor any need to stand firm. A light hidden poses no threat to darkness.

Those who boldly preach the Word of God, even the gritty parts, who refuse to condone or comfort sin, especially among believers, and who will not go along to get along. All who proclaim that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to the forgiveness of our sins and the inheritance of eternal life in heaven. Any who will boldly speak the truth when they’ve been told to stay quiet, who will worship God with their whole lives no matter who is watching.

These are the ones who will inherit this promise of God.

Lord, make us ready. By the power of Your Spirit give us boldness to live our faith out loud, to live Your truth and no other, to speak truth no matter the cost. To rejoice at being found worthy of suffering for the Name of Jesus.

“They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.” – Acts 5:40-41 

And if we know our bible history at all, we know this: persecution builds the Church. Keeps us from stagnating. Forces us to make a decision instead of riding an imaginary fence. Scatters us, and the gospel we carry within us, into the harvest fields.

We all want the promises of God when the promises of God feel good to us. Let’s not run from the promise that is good for us.

Selah.

Living His Truth: Unbusy

To my own disgrace, it was only within the past year that I began to take a serious look at what it meant to honor the Sabbath, and begin to learn how to obey the commandment. It’s harder than it might seem, and I’ll tell you why. Because we honor busy way more than we honor rest.

We give honor to those who run the hardest and do the most, and now, if we don’t run hard, do more, or have a lot of hustle, we feel lazy and then guilty. But we’d rather feel exhausted than lazy, yes? Anxious and stressed but, praise the Lord, not unproductive.

We live in a time and a culture where productivity is king and if our calendar isn’t full, then we are doing something wrong. And the saddest part of that? We are teaching it all to our children, who will grow up to match our depression and anxiety and feelings of guilt for not being or doing enough.

Is that really what we want? No. I am sure the answer to that question is no. So what does truth look like in this area? How did Jesus model the hustle?

Jesus basically did one thing, but that one thing did many other things.

He obeyed God. Everything Jesus did and said was in obedience to what He heard God saying and what He saw God doing. (John 5:19)

He went from place to place, preaching the gospel, healing, and casting out demons. In other words, He ministered to people. And within the act of doing ministry, disciples were made and taught, relationships were built, people were loved, God was worshipped, and the souls of men were purchased for God. All because Jesus did one thing. He obeyed His Father.

There were times when He was tired, and He was hungry, but there is no indication that Jesus ever felt like He wasn’t doing enough. He never looked around for what else He could do, never chased a side hustle. He just kept doing what God called Him to do.

Unbusy means we are not busy doing what God hasn’t asked of us. It means not looking for the more that we could be doing, and instead seeking God for what He wants us to do, and then just doing that.

And in the act of obeying God, who knows what other things will be getting done? The gospel may be coming to life, someone could get healed, feel loved, or realize their destitute state apart from God. Demons could be fleeing, oh my. Disciples could be made and taught, relationships formed. You could get tired, or hungry, but I would bet it all that you would be less anxious. Less depressed. Less restless. Feel less guilty and less stressed.

There were times when Jesus retreated, and called His disciples to retreat from doing to rest, other than on the Sabbath. Other times, He reclined at a table of food, invited to break bread with sinners. That too was obedience to what He saw and heard from His Father.

In our busy-ness, the art of listening for and hearing God has become, if not obsolete, then certainly less common. We are moved less by the sound of His voice and more by the push and pull of a culture that does not know Him, but has pushed and pulled its way into the Church nonetheless. And now we’re all pushing and pulling to get more done and I just have to ask…is it in obedience to God, or to our own need to be productive?

I pray that you will be encouraged to stop. Listen for His voice again. Listen for what it is that you are actually supposed to be doing, and then just do that.

Raise your kids without rush. Teach them what it looks like to just do what God is telling you to do without the need to add more so that your days are full.

Get tired from the work of love and prayer and moving in the Spirit in the world around you. Go hungry so that you can continue to feed others. But don’t do any of it from a place of worry or anxiety, or control. Ignore the need to keep up, to impress, or to prove something.

It’s a tall order, isn’t it? In fact, I think it’s much more challenging to live an unbusy life of obedience than it is to live a busy life of doing more, because it goes against what culture has instilled in us. It goes against our flesh.

And isn’t that a good thing?

Living His Truth: Unoffended

Skandalizō is the Greek word for offend, and it has a number of meanings.

  • to entice to sin (Matthew 5:29; 1Corinthians 8:13)
  • to cause a person to begin to distrust and desert one whom he ought to trust and obey; to cause to fall away; to stumble (John 6:61; Matthew 26:33)
  • to be offended in one, i.e. to see in another what I disapprove of and what hinders me from acknowledging his authority (Matthew 11:6; Mark 6:3)
  • to cause one to judge unfavorably or unjustly of another (Matthew 17:27)
  • to cause one displeasure at a thing (Matthew 15:12)

I think it’s safe to say that the opportunities for us to become offended at others or at God are many. I can count, using both hands at least, the people I have known throughout my walk with Jesus who have become offended, using most if not all of the definitions above.

Watching people stumble, enter a life of sin, or walk away altogether, is hard, especially since it is avoidable. Our offenses spring from our flesh and we have been given the Holy Spirit, who does not get offended.

Offended is our choice, not something that happens to us, or something we do that we just couldn’t help.

Mary and Martha could have chosen to be offended when Jesus did not come to heal Lazarus. They may have been hurt, but they did not become offended. (John 11)

In Matthew 11, John the Baptist is in prison, and asks what is now a very well known question:

“Are You the One who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

The same man who said “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29) is now saying “are You the one?” Jesus’ answer seems puzzling.

 “Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

I believe John the Baptist knew who Jesus was, but doubts crept in when Jesus didn’t do what John thought He would do. Like many others, perhaps he thought Jesus was there to start a revolution and overthrow Rome. Instead, He was going to “the least of these”.

It seems to me that Jesus’ pronouncement of blessing on anyone who doesn’t stumble because of Him, was also a warning to John. It’s Me, John. I am still the One. Don’t get offended because I am not doing what you expected of Me.

I think we need to hear the same warning because so many of us are waiting for Jesus to “restore to us the kingdom” by overthrowing a government and leading a great political revolution. Or perhaps we’re waiting for Him to give us what we want. To make our lives comfortable, fulfill our dreams, and help us succeed in all of our plans.

Instead, Jesus is still going to the least of us. Healing, bringing us back to life, and telling us the good news that we can be saved from our wretchedness. He is sanctifying us, often by fire, to rid us of our impurities, our selfishness, and our idolatry. Turning our ways into His way. And sometimes, as in the case of Mary and Martha, it can look like He’s not doing anything at all, when in fact He is about to show us the glory of God!

It’s Me, Church. I am still the One. Don’t get offended because I am not doing what you expected of Me.

We may get our feelings hurt. We might get angry at God and for sure one another. But when we choose to be offended we have chosen something far more serious, and dangerous, which is why I think Satan’s goal isn’t hurt feelings in the people of God. It is to encourage us to be offended. And the deeper the offense, the better.

The truth is, Jesus is still the One, His Word is still true, and His ways are still higher than our ways. He is still the head, and we are the body.

We cannot be offended at the body, without being offended at the head. I’ve known people who have said “I love Jesus, I just can’t stand Christians.” Or, “I love Jesus, but I don’t want anything to do with the Church.” The truth is, Jesus will never separate Himself from His Church. We do that, and it is always based on an offense.

We are His Church and the command still stands to walk in love toward one another, to forgive one another, and to consider others above ourselves. To pray together, walk together, serve together, and worship God together.

Bottom line: The whole world is offended these days, and the enticement to join them in it is strong. But we are not the world, we are the Church.

We can choose to live unoffended.